The rev­e­la­tions about the state of White­hall on Mon­day are deeply trou­bling and need to be ad­dressed with a lev­el of ur­gency and trans­paren­cy.

This is an his­toric build­ing that was re­fur­bished and re­opened in 2019 to the tune of $32 mil­lion of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey. Yet, new Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Bar­ry Padarath, on Mon­day de­tailed what he claimed was the phys­i­cal con­di­tion of the build­ing on the Gov­ern­ment’s first work­ing day in of­fice.

Padarath re­port­ed that the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in­di­cat­ed that there are parts of the build­ing that can­not be used due to flood­ing and a mould prob­lem, which has cre­at­ed a health risk.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment of­fi­cials, who used the site as re­cent­ly as March, yes­ter­day rub­bished claims the build­ing was un­fit for use.

Po­lit­i­cal pos­tur­ing aside, it is crit­i­cal that the Gov­ern­ment now adds vi­su­als so that the pub­lic can make an as­sess­ment.

How­ev­er, this is news the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion ought to have let the na­tion know. Even more im­por­tant, would be the is­sue of why staff were asked to work in an en­vi­ron­ment that could af­fect their health. The Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (UDe­COTT) al­so has im­por­tant ques­tions to an­swer, and not just about White­hall. This is not the first time one of their re­fur­bish­ment projects has been found want­i­ng. In Jan­u­ary 2020, weeks af­ter it was re­opened fol­low­ing a $441 mil­lion re­fur­bish­ment, heavy and per­sis­tent show­ers led to two leaks in the Red House. In late 2021, a leak in the South Cham­ber caused the sus­pen­sion of a Sen­ate sit­ting. Then, in 2022, there was struc­tur­al dam­age to the ceil­ing of the North Cham­ber due to leaks.

With a sev­er­al na­tion­al projects un­der the am­bit of UDe­COTT, one won­ders whether it is car­ry­ing out due dili­gence in mon­i­tor­ing both the con­struc­tion of new in­fra­struc­ture projects and re­fur­bish­ment ex­er­cis­es be­ing con­duct­ed on its be­half for the State.

The re­fur­bish­ment, restora­tion and re­open­ing of gov­ern­ment-owned fa­cil­i­ties can­not sim­ply be cos­met­ic. The same goes for new build­ings that are be­ing con­struct­ed. Is UDe­COTT over­see­ing shod­dy work or is it a ques­tion of main­te­nance? Or both? Mil­lions of dol­lars in tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey are be­ing spent on in­fra­struc­ture and those in au­thor­i­ty are tasked with en­sur­ing work of the high­est stan­dard is un­der­tak­en. The coun­try must get val­ue for the vast amount of mon­ey it is spend­ing on in­fra­struc­ture.

Ad­mit­ted­ly, gov­ern­ments have been very good at erect­ing build­ings and oth­er in­fra­struc­ture in this coun­try but main­te­nance has been the fly in the oint­ment. This is now ev­i­dent with White­hall, where con­trac­tors may need as much as three months to rec­ti­fy the cur­rent is­sues. Hav­ing said that, UDe­COTT must not wait for an­oth­er emer­gency sit­u­a­tion be­fore it acts to put a bet­ter main­te­nance man­age­ment sys­tem in place for state-owned build­ings.

While White­hall may re­quire some work in the months ahead, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has sev­er­al oth­er of­fices at her dis­pos­al she can work from. Now may be the time, how­ev­er, for the new Gov­ern­ment to show its met­tle by man­ag­ing this first ob­sta­cle and steer­ing UDe­COTT and oth­er state en­ti­ties on the road to bet­ter ef­fi­cien­cy.