$168M to upkeep schools, many closed

He spoke in the Lower House debate on Government motions to raise the State borrowing cap by an extra $50 billion.

Garcia said some schools are 50 years old and under the former government should have been better kept by the Educational Facilities Company Limited (EFCL).

“There are those in the national community who have echoed the sentiment that the new mandate and core business for EFCL is the award of contracts, corruption, nepotism, wastage among other less than honourable behaviours.” Garcia alleged poor practices under the former regime.

“On some schools we have witness stalled construction, suspended works by contractors, withdrawal of contracts from sites and termination of contractors,” he related. “Following upon such terminations by EFCL for non-performance or under-performance or withdrawals, with schools halfbuilt or the sites merely scratched, there are new awards for the same schools to new contractors and the cycle of the awards of new contracts for the same projects. Millions more are then paid in respect to new mobilisation and advance payments and there is evidence that this cycle has been repeated for the same schools.” Saying multi-million dollar performance bonds were often not worth the paper they were printed on, Garcia said the EFCL has admitted to a low rate of recovery monies from errant contractors under these bonds.

“One has to ask, where has the due diligence been? Where has been the oversight by the Ministry of Education over this very important State enterprise, which has the future of our children’s’ education in its hands?” He hit the former government for letting the nation’s patrimony be frittered away. “One wonders whether any conspiracy is afoot or negligence is at play when a management or public officials can allow companies, which are incapable of paying up on bonds and guarantees or when a Ministry, the Board and/or management of EFCL are either unable or reluctant to pursue recovery of state funds under these guarantees.” He made his point by saying that in the past seven years, some seven secondary schools have been under construction at a total cost of $1.4 billion, (or about $200 million per school). These are Barataria North Secondary, Carapichaima West, Mount Hope Secondary, Parvati Girls’ College, Shiva Boys’ Hindu College, Siparia Secondary and St Joseph Secondary. “None of these seven secondary schools has been fully completed after more than five years. The percentage completion of these schools range between 10 to 75 percent. In some cases percentage payment made to contractors was way ahead of works completed on the project.” Garcia said $845 million is now needed to complete these seven schools projects. “Where should these monies come from Mr Deputy Speaker?” Garcia bemoaned that for 2016 his Ministry has received a $440 million allocation to build schools, which in fact cost $3,000 million ($3 billion).

In a breakdown he said the allocation for ECCE and primary schools is $245 million but the actual cost is $1,400 million ($1.4 billion).

The allocation for secondary schools is $195 million, but the real cost is $1,500 million ($1.5 billion).

“The Ministry has to pay close to $3 billion over the short term period! What am I to do?”.

Garcia lamented that the Ministry has a $337 million outstanding accumulated debt for construction owed to 20 contractors, and a $40 million outstanding debt for outfitting such schools. He summed up the Ministry’s debts as $600 million to contractors, $73 million to MTS, $1 million to WASA, $10 million to TTEC and $5 million to TSTT.

“We cannot continue like this,” he declared.