To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?The more in­for­ma­tion made avail­able on the Gov­ern­ment's con­struc­tion pro­gramme, the more con­fus­ing the sit­u­a­tion be­comes. So too do the ex­pla­na­tions sur­round­ing the es­ca­la­tion in costs be­come won­drous to those sit­ting on the side­lines, per­haps un­aware as the Gov­ern­ment and its con­struc­tion dri­ver, Ude­cott, con­tin­ue mer­ri­ly ahead.

Let us start with the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, the north fa­cil­i­ty that is. At the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the fa­cil­i­ty, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning an­nounced proud­ly that the acad­e­my had been com­plet­ed with­in bud­get and on time. How­ev­er, on Tues­day this week, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dick-Forde went to the Sen­ate and said the orig­i­nal com­ple­tion date for the acad­e­my (north) was De­cem­ber 2008, which means the fa­cil­i­ty was a full 11 months be­hind sched­ule. The min­is­ter al­so an­nounced that the orig­i­nal cost of the acad­e­my was US$60 mil­lion–ap­prox­i­mate­ly $378 mil­lion. How­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning's fig­ure worked out to be ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500 mil­lion. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Min­is­ter Dick-Forde did not of­fer in­for­ma­tion about the vary­ing costs and dates to ex­plain the ma­jor dis­crep­an­cies. How­ev­er, the min­is­ter did give a few rea­sons for mi­nor cost es­ca­la­tion. With re­gard to the Port-of-Spain acad­e­my, she list­ed de­mo­li­tion and re­place­ment of the old ten­nis courts from the site to the King George V Park. Now this is a quite baf­fling ex­pla­na­tion which rais­es fur­ther ques­tions. Was it that the orig­i­nal plan was to sim­ply flat­ten the ten­nis courts and not re­place them? If the an­swer is "yes," then is it that the Gov­ern­ment was com­plete­ly un­con­cerned for sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing net­ball and hock­ey, used by thou­sands of peo­ple?

But if the an­swer is "no," then what in­com­pe­tence on the part of the plan­ners and those who de­vel­oped the cost pack­age to con­struct the acad­e­my. How could they have not bud­get­ed for the de­struc­tion and restora­tion of those very vis­i­ble sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties? With re­gard to the south acad­e­my, there is al­so the un­ex­plained vari­a­tion in pro­ject­ed costs and ac­tu­al costs. The Prime Min­is­ter, speak­ing at the launch, said that this fa­cil­i­ty would cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $320 mil­lion com­pared to the ap­prox­i­mate­ly $240 mil­lion fig­ure giv­en by the min­is­ter. There is al­so the sig­nif­i­cant shift in the com­ple­tion time by over 12 months. Here again we are faced with a few in­cred­i­ble items which were not orig­i­nal­ly catered for, among them the re­lo­ca­tion of a sew­er line. How could the de­sign­ers have drawn up plans and not catered for the re­moval of such a line? Al­so, what has not been giv­en by ei­ther the Prime Min­is­ter or his Plan­ning Min­is­ter is a break­down in­di­cat­ing change in plans, ad­di­tions to orig­i­nal de­signs and oth­er fac­tors which would ex­plain why the cost es­ca­la­tion and time over­runs on both projects.

This in­for­ma­tion is im­por­tant be­cause the Gov­ern­ment and Ude­cott have damned the lo­cal con­struc­tion in­dus­try for sim­i­lar kinds of over­runs of time and es­ca­la­tion in prices when a num­ber of the lo­cal con­trac­tors have blamed the de­lays and cost es­ca­la­tion on the Gov­ern­ment for chang­ing de­signs and adding to the size of the projects. Clar­i­fi­ca­tion on these mat­ters has to be made as the Gov­ern­ment comes be­fore the bar of pub­lic opin­ion to ar­gue its case for its pref­er­ence of for­eign con­trac­tors. This is un­doubt­ed­ly the largest and most ex­pen­sive con­struc­tion pro­gramme ever en­gaged in this coun­try. The re­sources are part of the pat­ri­mo­ny of the coun­try, and not mere­ly for this gen­er­a­tion and those liv­ing at the mo­ment, but of those gen­er­a­tions to come. There has to be a prop­er ac­count­ing for the re­sources ex­pend­ed, the hun­dreds of mil­lions that are be­ing ex­pa­tri­at­ed and the thou­sands of jobs that have not gone to na­tion­als.