Rather sur­pris­ing­ly on Mon­day, news of the im­pend­ing wind­ing up of the Ed­u­ca­tion­al Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EF­CL) be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia via the dis­sem­i­na­tion of a let­ter of ter­mi­na­tion which em­ploy­ees re­ceived an­nounc­ing the be­lea­guered com­pa­ny’s fate.

While it would ap­pear that the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions are now in the hands of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, that min­istry did not re­spond to ques­tions from the me­dia on the au­then­tic­i­ty of the let­ter nor ver­i­fy whether the in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing moves to file for bank­rupt­cy in the courts, was ac­cu­rate or not. Guardian Me­dia has been un­able to con­tact EF­CL chair­man Ri­car­do Ve­lasquez and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has de­ferred all ques­tions to the Fi­nance Min­istry.

How­ev­er, in the ab­sence of any of­fi­cial EF­CL or min­istry state­ment, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union has con­firmed it is rep­re­sent­ing the 70-odd EF­CL work­ers who will be af­fect­ed by the ac­tion, many of whom have not been paid since last Oc­to­ber as the com­pa­ny strug­gled to meet its func­tion­al oblig­a­tions.

These oblig­a­tions in­clude mon­ey owed to con­trac­tors, some of whom have gone to the courts to re­cov­er those sums. In fact, just last week NH In­ter­na­tion­al se­cured a $17 mil­lion judge­ment against the EF­CL over the ter­mi­na­tion of a con­tract for the con­struc­tion of a sec­ondary school.

If the com­pa­ny is to cease to ex­ist in due course, then the pub­lic de­serves full dis­clo­sure on its op­er­a­tions since in­cep­tion. Why full dis­clo­sure on the EF­CL?

Cit­i­zens are by now well aware of the ar­gu­ment over wastage of funds on spe­cial-pur­pose state en­ter­pris­es which ei­ther du­pli­cate ac­tiv­i­ties of oth­er state en­ti­ties or fail to achieve the de­sired out­comes of their ex­is­tence. In fact, many sec­tors of so­ci­ety be­lieve these en­ti­ties are mere­ly es­tab­lished to of­fer jobs and con­tracts to the boys and girls, or friends and fam­i­lies of ex­ist­ing gov­ern­ments at any giv­en time.

The EF­CL was set up in 2005 un­der the then Patrick Man­ning-led Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment. Its spe­cial­i­ty was project man­age­ment or­gan­i­sa­tion and its man­date was to de­liv­er, re­pair and main­tain ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions from the Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion lev­el straight up to sec­ondary school lev­el, as well as the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of the school text­book rental pro­gramme.

By all ac­counts, it seemed to have met some goals. Some 133 new school fa­cil­i­ties were con­struct­ed and out­fit­ted and over 8,000 re­pairs and main­te­nance jobs were re­port­ed­ly done dur­ing its tenure. But this was up un­til 2018, when the in­fra­struc­ture and con­struc­tion pro­grammes were tak­en away from its op­er­a­tions — which is to say its core func­tions, which means it ef­fec­tive­ly be­came re­dun­dant. A com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to earn rev­enue to pay its func­tion­al costs and debts should be a ma­jor part of any fea­si­bil­i­ty study un­der­tak­en be­fore its es­tab­lish­ment, so un­less gov­ern­ment un­der­took to meet these oblig­a­tions in­def­i­nite­ly we won­der how the EF­CL has come to this stage?

So while the EF­CL clear­ly is a bur­den on the trea­sury, we hope de­clar­ing bank­rupt­cy is not a ploy to avoid pay­ing its debts, es­pe­cial­ly by way of sev­er­ance to the work­ers af­fect­ed and to the con­trac­tors owed for work un­der­tak­en. This is why full dis­clo­sure of its op­er­a­tions is nec­es­sary.