For quite sometime now there has been grave concerns about the manner in which contractors execute their work and even though efforts by the authorities have been made to tighten up in this area, there are still many cases where they fail. When this occurs, scarce finances which are obtained from the tax payers of this country go down the drain and the people suffer.

Improvement of infrastructure is a key factor in improving people’s lives , reducing poverty and helping to attract investment which in turn facilitates and accelerates economic and commercial development.

“To say that infrastructure development has impact, is to state the obvious. No industrial country has advanced to such status without developing solid infrastructure facilities. And no low-income country has managed to escape poverty in the absence of infrastructure,” Liqun Jin Vice President, Operations 1 Asian Development Bank.

He adds: “Developing countries need to look at infrastructure investment as just that – an investment in the future of their people. They should, in my view, take a very broad, strategic and comprehensive approach and create a full fledged infrastructure program to meet the needs of today and tomorrow.”

“Getting infrastructure right requires more than just finances. It requires vision, strategic planning and management, attention to social and environmental consequences, and the capacity to follow through,” he stressed

Sometimes complaints from members of the public about poor and shoddy work by contractors go unheeded and the end result is millions of dollars have to be spent additionally to rectify defective work. This is totally unfair to the government and people of this country, and is wastage of our scarce financial resources which could have been used on other projects, instead of being reallocated in correcting deficient work.

In this regard President Jagdeo earlier this year issued a stern warning to contractors who fail to fulfill the terms of their contracts. However, those who are charged with the responsibility of monitoring and supervising projects should also be severely reprimanded whenever they fail to carry out their functions effectively and efficiently.

These persons must understand that they have crucial and critical projects which has to be executed with utmost diligence and dedication.

One case in the recent past where no action was taken against a contractor for shoddy work and repeatedly failing to meet revised completion deadlines was the reconstruction of the dormitory at President’s College which was destroyed by fire. The project was executed by the now defunct SIMAP.

The result was that students had to endure tremendous suffering due to the excessively long delays in the completion of the building. Many of those students were preparing for the CSEC examination.

In this regard the announcement by the Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud that with immediate effect, a list of all civil works contracts being implemented will be published in the national newspapers for farmers, the public and the media to monitor their progress is most welcome, and this is indeed a good step in the direction of oversight.

It is also encouraging to note that the minister has conceded that feedback in many cases comes in late and has pledged to have this corrected.

Persaud, said he has always emphasised the importance of effective and timely implementation of contracts, but generally, the track record has been mixed.

“Many of these projects have supervisory forms and you depend on periodic reports from these supervisory forms. Sometimes these come in three months late or in three month intervals, depending on the duration, but we believe, in terms of our execution capacity, that we will look at developing immediate feedback,” he pointed out.

Our country is a poor and developing one now in the throes of advancing socio-economic development and therefore we must ensure that our scarce financial resources are spent efficiently and we get value for money. Even the wealthy nations are working consistently to ensure efficiency in this regard.

We simply cannot afford such wastage because this hampers and slows down the national development process.