Keep it simple!

Jun 26, 2018 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

We have become a consultant’s country. Everything that has to be done requires a preliminary study, then a draft strategy has to be prepared which has to be subject to long consultations and the holding of workshops before a final strategy is prepared.
When that is approved, projects have to be identified and funding sought. The persons providing the money have to do their own feasibility studies and then ask for further data collection to drive the intended project.
But before all of that, some more consultants have to be hired to develop institutional capacity. This will lead to the creation of a high paid bureaucracy, which will produce more reports, which will lead to more studies. The cycle will perpetuate itself.
It is all too complicated, as is evident in the plan to make Bartica a green town. There must be a simpler way of getting things done.
In order to make Bartica a green town, it has been as necessary to establish a National Stakeholder Forum for the Transitioning to National Energy Security (TNES) for the Bartica as a model Green Town Project. There is also a plan to have energy audits of the town, one of the smallest in the country.
Whatever happened to good old common sense? Why is this complicated planning necessary for something, which can be achieved with basic common sense?
A simple common sense plan would start by counting the number of streetlights in the community and preparing a budget for changing these into solar powered lamps. This does not require any detailed consultant report.
If the idea is to encourage residents and businesses to switch to solar power, the a solar farm should be established to produce energy for the entire community because there is no way that the ordinary household is going to afford to convert their home to use solar power.
Once the solar farm can produce energy which is cheaper than what can be produced by GPL, then the farm should enter into a power- purchase agreement with the GPL branch in that town. GPL already has the distribution system.
There is no need for all this fancy energy strategy. Simple commonsense and straightforward planning will do.
The obsession, which governments have with hiring consultants or paying some of their staff consultants’ salaries leads to a lot of reports being generated but very little being achieved. At the pace of change in the world, by the time, the consultant report is read and approved, better options would have become available and a new report would have to be prepared.
The whole issue of financing development has created a consultancy industry. This industry makes a lot of money mostly for those international agencies, which specialize in offering technical assistance. It creates high-paid but low results employment for a battery of paper-pushers who are known as consultants and experts.
These persons are good at writing reports and calculating costs but poor at getting things done which they will say is not their responsibility.
If Bartica wants to switch to renewables, it should do so by finding an energy source, which can be supplied cheaper than fossil fuel. It can invite offers from private firms to supply the power to GPL under a power-purchase agreement.
Right now, the largest cost for solar energy is the storage. And this places it out of the reach of the average man and small businesses. But if the government is keen for persons to convert their homes and businesses to solar power, it should offer the incentives for them to do by demonstrating that it is cheaper to go off grid than stay on the grid, and by offering some additional tax concessions. That is the basic common sense way to go green.
Transportation, it is said utilizes more than 40% of the energy generated in the town. Well, certain zones can be designated as walking zones, which would reduce emissions from fuel sources or incentives can be provided for persons to use electric cars or e-bicycles.
If the APNU+AFC wants to be freely reelected to office in 2020, it should put away all these strategies and reports and do away with all these consultant-type offices. It should put the money that is saved to better use. It should pursue common sense and basic planning to move forward in doing what it says it wants to do.
Government is not a complex art. it is consultancy, a self-perpetuating system, which makes it so.

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