Gail Alexan­der

Oc­cu­pa­tion of the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus, Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain, is ex­pect­ed to be­gin from year-end while prob­lems at the Im­mi­gra­tion and In­land Rev­enue build­ings are be­ing reg­u­larised in the short-term, says Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai.Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's week­ly gov­ern­ment me­dia brief­ing, Howai not­ed re­cent prob­lems ex­pe­ri­enced by mem­bers of the pub­lic in ac­cess­ing the In­land Rev­enue Build­ing and oth­er of­fices hit by in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

The Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) and oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fice staffers re­cent­ly have been protest­ing the con­di­tion of var­i­ous build­ings.The PSA claims the build­ings do not meet Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty (OSH) rules.Staff took ac­tion over the busy March-April pe­ri­od when tax re­turns were be­ing sub­mit­ted by the pub­lic. The Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion al­so was af­fect­ed.Howai said $1.3 bil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed in the 2013-2014 bud­get for com­ple­tion of the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus which was built by the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. The al­lo­ca­tion would be spent over the next 12 to 15 months, he added.

On why work had not start­ed, he said Gov­ern­ment was work­ing with a deficit bud­get and had to pri­ori­tise.Howai al­so not­ed the gov­ern­ment cam­pus had been un­fin­ished for some time and had some de­te­ri­o­ra­tion and out­fit­ting is­sues.He said his min­istry had ap­proved fund­ing for the work to be done and the re­quest for pro­pos­als was is­sued on a phased ba­sis for the dif­fer­ent as­pects.Those in­clud­ed the Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er, In­land Rev­enue Unit and Cus­toms build­ing, he added.Howai said the cam­pus, start­ing with the Cus­toms build­ing, was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by year-end on a phased ba­sis. He said work on the Cus­toms build­ing had al­ready start­ed and oc­cu­pa­tion was ex­pect­ed by the last quar­ter of the year.

Over the next year and up to the end of next year, it was al­so ex­pect­ed the dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ment de­part­ments would be mov­ing in­to the com­plex and "we should be able to bring all these is­sues to con­clu­sion," he added.Howai said he ex­pect­ed the OSH prob­lems at the im­mi­gra­tion and BIR build­ings to be com­plete­ly reg­u­larised in the short-term."In the next few months we ex­pect to see a con­sid­er­able im­prove­ment, not on­ly at the In­land Rev­enue and Im­mi­gra­tion over the longer term but al­so at NIB of­fices and oth­ers gov­ern­ment di­vi­sions oc­cu­py," he added.

Howai said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter had tak­en steps to ad­dress prob­lems with the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment to en­sure OSH com­pli­ance.

He said staff would work from 8 am to 1 pm to al­low for the ex­pe­dit­ing of struc­tur­al work.Cab­i­net al­so has ap­proved fund­ing to com­plete work that need­ed to be done at BIR's 20 of­fices through­out T&T.Howai said VAT ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cers were re­moved to the Fi­nance Min­istry build­ing.Works at the Trea­sury Build­ing would be com­plet­ed with­in the next two weeks, he said.

An­oth­er min­istry unit, Vic­to­ria Court, had been com­plet­ed and work at Trinidad House and all re­quired ap­provals there, were ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the first week of next month, he added.Howai said $15 mil­lion would be in­vest­ed to up­grade BIR's in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems to en­hance on­line in­ter-ac­tion with the pub­lic and an­oth­er $15 mil­lion would fund a se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem to up­grade and safe­guard tax­pay­ers' in­for­ma­tion.He said he al­so vis­it­ed Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of­fices to en­sure an up­grade of NIB of­fices, which he not­ed had spe­cial cus­tomers, such as the ill, el­der­ly, re­tired and preg­nant.