As a con­trac­tor who has been in the busi­ness for over 20 years in T&T, I have nev­er be­fore seen such a volatile sit­u­a­tion that faces us to­day. There are two is­sues which I urge all stake­hold­ers, in par­tic­u­lar this "gov­ern­ment of change," to ad­dress. The first is the late and/or non-pay­ment of pro­fes­sion­als and con­trac­tors by state agen­cies and state-owned en­ter­pris­es. The im­pact of this is a vis­cous cy­cle in that con­trac­tors can­not meet their own oblig­a­tions to their sub­con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers. The re­al­i­ty is that to­day in T&T, nu­mer­ous con­trac­tors, sup­pli­ers and pro­fes­sion­als can­not pay salaries and wages.I urge the Gov­ern­ment to con­tact all lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and have them con­firm that nu­mer­ous con­trac­tors and sub­con­trac­tors have ex­haust­ed their over­draft fa­cil­i­ty and sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue.

The re­al­i­ty now fac­ing so many of us to­day is that we may have to close our busi­ness­es and send every­one home. We sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue with­out the set­tle­ment of these out­stand­ing pay­ments from so many state agen­cies and en­ter­pris­es. I urge the Gov­ern­ment to ini­ti­ate a debt re­cov­ery act sim­i­lar to Swe­den which has im­proved over­due pay­ments. Sim­ple leg­is­la­tion was en­act­ed giv­ing the cred­i­tor a right to debt re­cov­ery com­pen­sa­tion where com­pa­nies pay­ing late must add eight per cent above Cen­tral Bank rates.The sec­ond is­sue is the lack of work to sus­tain the ar­chi­tects, en­gi­neers and con­trac­tors in T&T to­day.

De­spite the so-called mega road projects, the fact re­mains that many pro­fes­sion­als and con­trac­tors are on the brink of col­lapse. The work is sim­ply not there to sus­tain the staff and oth­er over­heads that are re­quired to keep our busi­ness­es open.One has to ask whether the Gov­ern­ment is out of touch with the re­al­i­ty of what is fac­ing the con­struc­tion in­dus­try to­day.There ap­pears to be two key is­sues that need to be con­sid­ered ur­gent­ly by the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure that the con­struc­tion sec­tor is quick­ly re­vived:

n The Gov­ern­ment must start to spend mon­ey. The ap­par­ent ap­proach of the Gov­ern­ment to cur­tail the spend­ing of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion by sim­ply not spend­ing is not a sus­tain­able op­tion. The re­al­i­ty of large un­em­ploy­ment in the con­struc­tion sec­tor is fast be­com­ing the norm here in T&T. In The Gov­ern­ment must have a plan in place for what it in­tends to build/de­liv­er over the next four years and be able to present this to the pub­lic. At the mo­ment the Gov­ern­ment does not seem to have a plan which out­lines the pri­or­i­ty projects over the next four years and, more im­por­tant­ly, how they will get built and be paid for. We are tired of ten­der­ing for projects which sim­ply nev­er get start­ed.

I ur­gent­ly call on the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try, the Pro­fes- sion­al En­gi­neer­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, the In­sti­tute of Ar­chi­tects, the Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion, the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion to lob­by the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure that pu­bic funds are dis­bursed in a time­ly man­ner and that the Gov­ern­ment re­vi­talis­es the con­struc­tion sec­tor, which is on the brink of col­lapse.