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Current and past Education Ministers have similar views on “value for money”
A number of infrastructural contracts were awarded by the Ministry of Education in the past year in the quest
Minister of Education, Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine
to improve a number of schools across the country. But according to recently appointed Minister of Education, Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine, the coalesced A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) Government, will be looking to ensure that the associated projects reflect only value for money.
His disclosure is however a clear continuance of the principle that was embraced by former Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand. Manickchand at the commissioning of several of the infrastructural projects met with residents, teachers and even students and urged that they all be watchdogs in their respective communities. This tactic, she said, was one designed to furnish the Ministry with information if the projects in question contravene the stipulation of the contracts awarded.
This came as part of a new policy implemented by the Education Ministry under Manickchand’s tenure. At a meeting last year to discuss works for a $30 Million Cummings Park Nursery School, Manickchand told stakeholders, “My new policy is that every new school that we are building, we are going to have community meetings like this where we will give to you the drawings (building plan), the bills of quantity so that you can see how much stone and sand (is being used); what is supposed to be done and by when, so that we get quality for our money.”
She, in appealing for the community’s support to ensure that works are done according to detailed specification, noted, “At the end of the day this is your school, you will be the end users, your children will benefit from it…While we know that we are doing a good thing, we want to make sure that everybody is
Former Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand.
involved to get good work done.”
She had revealed even then, that contractors who are out to fleece the nation represent a major challenge faced by the Ministry of Education. This state of affairs is one that is often characterised by these contractors producing shoddy work, she had disclosed.
“They give us less stone and less sand; they spend less on the school,” said Manickchand. “We pay them for what they are supposed to be building but then, at the end of the day, what we have is a school that six months after (construction) start breaking, and a year after you have to do more work.”
According to Dr. Roopnaraine while his purview will be to ensure monies are spent wisely in the education sector, this notion is also one that will be embraced by the government as a whole. “This goes for the Ministry of Education as it does for the entire Government. I know this is something in which the President (Brigadier David Granger) feels very, very strongly about.
“At the Ministry of Finance we are prepared to spend and build the infrastructure that we need, but we want to ensure that all along the line we get value for money.”
He outlined that Government is not prepared to tolerate situations where vast sums of money are spent sometimes for sub-standard works.
And in order to address such situations at the level of the Education Ministry, Dr. Roopnaraine said that there is already in place a dedicated unit that deals with infrastructure, including the completion of schools.
“I will be looking into that because one of the areas we want, and this is something that really will have to be done at the level of the Regional Education Officers, is to have an assessment of where things stand in relation to the physical plan of the schools….what were the needs of the schools, how that work is being contracted out, how it is to be managed…so there is all of that ahead of us,” said Minister Roopnaraine.
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