Monitoring officers for Govt projects

She was speaking at a post-Cabinet news conference at Whitehall yesterday.

Robinson-Regis said the monitoring specialists would be examining all projects financed by the Government, and will report quarterly to the Cabinet.

Ministries which are not performing (not implementing) will have these officers probing them to find out what the problems are, and hopefully solve them, Robinson-Regis stated. She said if potential problems could not be fixed in a short time, the funding (for the specific project) would be redirected to another project which is performing well.

Robinson-Regis announced that the Ministry of Planning would also be putting special technology in place which would allow a red flag to go up once a particular ministry is trying to drawdown funds, but is not on target with its implementation schedule.

Robinson-Regis announced that three of the Specially Purpose State Companies will be put under the Planning Ministry. They are Rudecott, the Eastern Port-of-Spain Development Corporation (which is being chaired by Anthony Fifi) and CISL. Robinson-Regis also announced that Government would be changing its approach to seeking funding from the IDB.

She said Government had found that when ministries put forward projects which are established on a large scale, that it takes too long to be funded.

In the future, Government would be breaking up projects into smaller units, she said.

In response to questions, Public Administration Minister Lenny Saith said the monitoring officers would not be "policemen," and that what was contemplated was not a CIA or gestapo-type operation. "They — the monitoring officers — would be going into the ministries to identify and work out the problems," he said.