Kali­fa Clyne

Con­struc­tion and in­fra­struc­tur­al projects to­talling in ex­cess of $15 bil­lion have been left in­com­plete while some build­ings have been un­used and are wait­ing to be com­mis­sioned by the State, ac­cord­ing to Sun­day Guardian cal­cu­la­tions.

One of the old­est projects, the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, re­mains un­fin­ished even though it was start­ed more than 13 years ago.

Oth­er out­stand­ing projects in­clude the Red House, Point Fortin High­way Ex­ten­sion, con­struc­tion of hos­pi­tals in Point Fortin and Ari­ma and the Ca­roni Fu­el Fa­cil­i­ty. Con­struc­tion on some of these projects have stalled.

Head of the Con­struc­tion As­so­ci­a­tion Mikey Joseph, in in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, said the rea­son for the de­lays and aban­don­ment of projects were of­ten po­lit­i­cal. He be­lieves this is wrong since tax­pay­ers are the ones pay­ing for this.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, fol­low­ing his gov­ern­ment's two-day re­treat at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley list­ed some of over a dozen projects ex­pect­ed to be re­boot­ed in the near fu­ture.

Row­ley stayed away from giv­ing spe­cif­ic dates for the com­ple­tion of projects, but said pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion will be pro­claimed by March 2017.

He said the con­struc­tion of the Point Fortin high­way will re­sume "short­ly" and gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments for the hos­pi­tals in Ari­ma and Point Fortin would be re­viewed.

While Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to an­nounce plans, ac­tu­al de­liv­ery of sev­er­al projects seems to be con­tin­u­osly post­poned.

The Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um in Tou­ru­ba is un­fin­ished af­ter more than 13 years, and its de­liv­ery date was ex­tend­ed from Au­gust 2016 to Feb­ru­ary 2017.

"In the case of the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, it was left un­at­tend­ed main­ly be­cause of change in po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2010," Joseph told the Sun­day Guardian.

"Pri­or to that, the con­trac­tor cho­sen did not have a track record in pro­vid­ing projects on time. It would have been a com­bi­na­tion of those is­sues."

Joseph said the sit­u­a­tion where pub­lic sec­tor projects of­ten faced is­sues with de­liv­ery could not be dealt with in a sim­plis­tic po­si­tion.

"In terms of po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions not deal­ing with projects they meet when they come in­to of­fice, it is some­thing every­one needs to frown up­on. The fact is that it is tax­pay­ers' mon­ey."

He said in many cas­es, an in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion would not want to fin­ish a project be­cause they be­lieve it is not a cred­it to them.

"Right now the rea­son we don't have mon­ey is be­cause we would have spent ex­ces­sive­ly on a num­ber of things in­clud­ing projects which were not com­plet­ed. It is wrong be­cause the tax­pay­ers are pay­ing for it," Joseph said.

He said de­lays to projects were al­ways a huge fi­nan­cial bur­den to the State as the cost of restart­ing a project was very high.

"A con­trac­tor does not in­crease the cost of a job. A job in­creas­es be­cause the scope in­creas­es or a term or item on con­tract is changed. These in­creas­es must be agreed by de­sign­ers and pro­fes­sion­als hired by gov­ern­ment to do the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the con­tract."

He said these sit­u­a­tions hap­pened in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor but de­lays and cost over­runs were more preva­lent in the pub­lic sec­tor for spe­cif­ic rea­sons.

"A pri­vate man isn't go­ing to throw away his mon­ey. They do have cost in­cre­asse and it is re­lat­ed to scope in­creas­es but be­cause those are his prof­its they are not go­ing to go along with cer­tain things."

In an in­ter­view on Thurs­day, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Con­rad Enill said, "Some­times when projects are con­cep­tu­alised, they are very good at the time and over time...some­times we look at how the project is im­ple­ment­ed and then look at it sim­ply in dol­lar terms and say well, that was a bad idea...it was bad­ly man­aged with­out recog­nis­ing that you don't know in the fu­ture about all the things that will oc­cur and when in fact they do oc­cur, you have to deal with them."

He said if the price of steel went up, then you can't say you're aban­don­ing the project.

"The project maybe 25 per cent com­plete and there­fore you've al­ready in­vest­ed in it so you just have to man­age it as best as you can. So I think that projects that are in fact good for the coun­try, if they are not com­plet­ed in a very short time frame or as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, through the date they were con­cep­tu­alised , you are go­ing to get cost overuns be­cause as you de­vel­op the project and see oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties, you'll say well, why don't I add this to it? Why don't we stop here or why don't I do this as well and those things should not have been con­cep­tu­alised when you were de­vel­op­ing the project so by de­f­i­n­i­tion the cost will be a lot more. And ac­tu­al­ly, what we do is that we don't fac­tor those things in­to the con­ver­sa­tion. we sim­ply talk about how it was $10 and now it's $20.

n In the fol­low­ing weeks the Sun­day Guardian will take a look at these struc­tures, their in­tend­ed pur­pos­es, costs and the rea­sons be­hind these de­lays.

GOV­ERN­MENT PROJECTS STILL TO BE DE­LIV­ERED

n COU­VA MED­ICAL FA­CIL­I­TY

n THE BEETHAM WASTE WA­TER TREAT­MENT PLANT

n UNI­VER­SI­TY OF THE WEST IN­DIES SOUTH CAM­PUS (PE­NAL/DEBE)

n MO­TOR VE­HI­CLE AU­THOR­I­TY

n POINT FORTIN HOS­PI­TAL

n PE­NAL FIRE STA­TION

n SHI­VA BOYS' & PAR­VATI GIRLS' HIN­DU COL­LEGES (PE­NAL)

n CA­RONI FU­EL FA­CIL­I­TY

n BRI­AN LARA STA­DI­UM

n RED HOUSE

n SOLOMON HO­CHOY HIGH­WAY EX­TEN­SION

n PRES­I­DENTS COT­TAGE