Tabaquite MP Surujrattan Rambachan believes the Ministry of Works and Transport needs to reassess its labour force as he believes there is a large amount of inefficiencies within it.
His comments came during a sitting of the Standing Finance Committee as it reviewed the proposed expenditure for the new fiscal year.
“The time has come... to revise how we operate with all this labour because I believe there is about a 40 per cent wastage in terms of the employment of people and what they are producing. Not only here, local government also,” he said as the committee examined the allocation for the drainage division.
He described these inefficiencies as “a massive drain on productivity” which cannot persist if the Government is trying to save money.
“If it is to keep people employed— that’s one thing. But if it is to make sure that we save money that we can utilise to finish the schools, fund the hospitals...i think we need to look carefully at how we are utilising these people.”
He said there are instances where workers do not work their required hours, “don’t go to work or just go and do nothing.”
Rambachan suggested that the workers, especially those employed in the drainage division, be given the requisite equipment and training to better capitalise on their labour.
“You are still putting people with cutlasses to cut along the highway like CEPEP is putting people with whackers to cut big areas on the highway which they could take one piece of equipment and two persons where they have more than 10 people or twenty people employed now,” he said.
Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan did not disagree with Rambachan, but assured “that is exactly what we are doing.”
He explained that the Drainage Division has been experiencing staffing challenges since its back- and- forth movement from the ministry to the Water Resources Agency and then back to the ministry.
However, he said they were “rebuilding that capacity now and we are trying our best to utilise the staff in such a way they can actually get more with less and we have been able to achieve significant improvements in the Drainage Division, I would say, within the last year or so.”