It is in­deed wel­come news that Cus­toms and Ex­cise will be mov­ing in­to the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza right af­ter Car­ni­val. This will be the first oc­cu­pan­cy of the build­ings that the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion spent bil­lions of tax­pay­ers dol­lars on to con­struct. Hope­ful­ly, the oth­er gov­ern­ment min­istries and agen­cies al­lo­cat­ed space in that fa­cil­i­ty will quick­ly fol­low suit, sav­ing tax­pay­ers the bil­lions of dol­lars cur­rent­ly paid to Port-of-Spain land­lords for of­fice space.

In the case of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Build­ing, it has been a long, painful eight-year wait. NH In­ter­na­tion­al Caribbean (NHIC) Ltd be­gan con­struc­tion more than a decade ago, on May 17, 2004, and the orig­i­nal com­ple­tion date was March 16, 2006. By the time the build­ing was fi­nal­ly com­plet­ed in De­cem­ber 2010, the cost of con­struc­tion had sky­rock­et­ed from $99,530,699 to $113,370,880.39.

Then it took an­oth­er four years to award the con­tract for the fit-out of the build­ing at a cost of $76,986,905.35, That work fi­nal­ly got go­ing last April and was com­plet­ed late last year.

Over all that time, staff of the di­vi­sion had to con­tend with less than ad­e­quate ac­com­mo­da­tions at Nicholas Court, lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of Aber­crom­by Street and In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain.

In­or­di­nate de­lays have been a re­cur­ring theme through­out every phase of con­struc­tion of the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza, a 160,000 square me­ter com­plex com­pris­ing two 23-sto­ry tow­ers, which be­gan un­der the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, then led by Patrick Man­ning, and was large­ly com­plet­ed by the time that ad­min­is­tra­tion was vot­ed out of of­fice and re­placed by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion in May 2010.

The com­plex is al­so sup­posed to house a Board of In­land Rev­enue Tow­er; Im­mi­gra­tion Build­ing; and the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er and Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al–and every one of those fa­cil­i­ties have been sub­ject­ed to lengthy, cost­ly and frus­trat­ing de­lays.

Based on time­lines giv­en by Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal last year, the Im­mi­gra­tion Build­ing should be ready for oc­cu­pa­tion next month as the fit-out of that build­ing is due for com­ple­tion by March 20–al­most a decade af­ter con­struc­tion start­ed on No­vem­ber 2005.

That build­ing was orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed to house the ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. How­ev­er, Im­mi­gra­tion is in more ur­gent need of ac­com­mo­da­tion since the rental space it cur­rent­ly oc­cu­pies on Fred­er­ick Street has been the fo­cus of fre­quent protests and shut downs by the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), bar­gain­ing agents for the work­ers, over health and safe­ty con­cerns. As a re­sult, there were dis­rup­tions and de­lays in the de­liv­ery of crit­i­cal im­mi­gra­tion ser­vices, in­clud­ing the is­su­ing of pass­ports.

The sit­u­a­tion isn't much dif­fer­ent for the Board of In­land Rev­enue. Here, too, there have been sig­nif­i­cant de­lays in com­ple­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty and dur­ing that long wait staff have been sub­ject­ed to dis­rup­tions over health and safe­ty con­cerns.

The Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza, lo­cat­ed just across from the long-com­plet­ed Port-of-Spain Wa­ter­front Com­plex, was built to ad­dress the need for mod­ern, com­fort­able of­fice ac­com­mo­da­tions from which var­i­ous gov­ern­ment ser­vices can be de­liv­ered in an ef­fi­cient and time­ly man­ner. The years of poor­ly ex­plained de­lays in hav­ing those fa­cil­i­ties out­fit­ted and ready for oc­cu­pa­tion have come at a high price to tax­pay­ers.

There must be no more ex­cus­es or de­lays–those build­ings should be ful­ly oc­cu­pied and func­tion­ing in the short­est pos­si­ble time.