It now costs less to supervise more

Apr 25, 2012 Letters

Dear Editor,
I have been following the Kaieteur News’ disclosures on the Georgetown Public Hospital waste disposal project. We discover, thanks to the Kaieteur News, for which we paid $300 million,now looks like one which should cost half this amount. It’s disgraceful and wasteful.
Here on the one hand we have Nadir telling us that our old age pensioners are getting three pensions without having regard to the sizes of these pensions; 3-$2000 pensions cannot be better than one $10,000 pension, Nadir, so quit the shenanigans and deception and give the people a more realistic pension.
But we probably can’t give them more since occurrences like this one at the GPHC are going on dozens of times every single day in this country, i.e. incompetence and theft.
To develop this matter of dishonesty and incompetence that is so prevalent in this country, I would like to address something which I saw in the actual 2012 budget estimates Volume 1 on page 14 at section 31:Ministry of Public Works: we see that the total capital budget allocation for the Ministry of Public Works is $17.706 billion. The allocation to administer this huge amount of money to pay for numerous construction projects countrywide, is only $89 million.
In 2011 when the ministry’s capital allocation was $13.152 billion the staffing cost was $90.3 million. i.e. they are projecting to spend less to manage the expenditure of $17.706 billion than the previous year’s $13.152 Billion.
Today, as distinct from the past,all of the Ministry’s work is contracted out,so there is need for even more experienced and knowledgeable staff to ensure that the people’s money is being well spent.
This means qualified and knowledgeable engineers and managers, of all kinds are needed; civil, quantity, construction etc. are needed to administer the spending of $17.706 billion in capital works. How can such a small and weak engineering/managerial staff which only costs $89 million a year ensure that the Guyana taxpayers are getting value for their money?
The fact is that they are not. We know that there is one super engineer at the Ministry but given the shoddy and failed works we have seen, he is just not enough.
I now list the staff which this ministry requires to design, quantify and supervise G$17.706 billion by contractors; 7 administrative staff; 2 senior Technical; 14 other technical and craft skilled; 18 clerical, 14 semi skilled operatives and unskilled and 27 Contracted employees.
We seem to have 7 administrative staff to administrate 82 people i.e. roughly one administratorfor every 11 persons! Also the “other charges” to help these 82 staff members perform their duties is more than $1.4 billion!
We have no idea what these contracted employees do. Some could very well be engineers,but since we do not know I am forced to disregard them.But looking at the established staff, those who are skilled and who have responsibility for making up the estimates of each of these numerous projects and supervising the process of monitoring them through all of their stages to completion, we have seven administrative staff and 16 technical and craft skilled employees, a total of 23 staff members to physically supervise the G$17.7 billion for Capital projects all across this country.
This is patently ridiculous! This is why we have such poor quality work in our projects.The contractors do practically what they want to do and to hell with the people of this country and their taxes. No one is watching them properly and it must stop.
And they will have to start here at this Ministry of Works. They must employ a consultant immediately to tell them how much staff they need to properly monitor how our money is spent, and to evaluate what sort of administrator is required to look after10-11 people.
Tony Vieira

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