To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

By wag­ing "war" on the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is en­gag­ing in an all-too-trans- par­ent at­tempt to di­vert at­ten­tion from the ma­jor is­sue of the day: his and his Gov­ern­ment's han­dling of the al­leged in­volve­ment of Calder Hart and his wife in award­ing an $820 mil­lion con­tract to a com­pa­ny in which the close rel­a­tives of Mrs Hart are said to be di­rec­tors. More­over, it is an at­tempt by the Prime Min­is­ter at cheap pol­i­tick­ing: se­lect­ing an area of great need, pub­lic hous­ing, and at­tempt­ing to work peo­ple in­to a fren­zy over a com­mod­i­ty in short sup­ply. Hav­ing blast­ed the lo­cal con­trac­tors two years ago, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning re­turned to the sub­ject some time lat­er and seemed to hold out an olive branch. In fact he pref­aced the at­tempt to make peace by not­ing that the rev­enue sit­u­a­tion of the coun­try had changed and it was time for the lo­cal con­trac­tors to come ful­ly on board in the Gov­ern­ment's mas­sive con­struc­tion port­fo­lio, a damn­ing in­dict­ment in it­self.

But now that the heat has been turned up on what is be­ing seen as Gov­ern­ment's in­ef­fi­cien­cies, at best, on the Ude­cott/Mr Hart is­sue and the award of con­tracts, and the gen­er­al dis­com­fort that large seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion have about Ude­cott, the Prime Min­is­ter has re­turned to tag­ging the con­struc­tion sec­tor. At the same time he does so he con­tin­ues to iden­ti­fy Ude­cott's and Mr Hart's stew­ard­ship as gold­en, ig­nor­ing the many over­runs in cost and time on Ude­cott projects. This news­pa­per is sure­ly not of the view that the lo­cal con­struc­tion in­dus­try is per­fect, far from it, but it cer­tain­ly ques­tions this ap­proach of con­duct­ing war­fare with the sec­tor as the best means of bring­ing rigour and qual­i­ty to the op­er­a­tions of lo­cal con­trac­tors. The Gov­ern­ment would cer­tain­ly have served the na­tion­al good far more ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly if it had tak­en the lo­cal in­dus­try in­to its con­fi­dence from the start and worked out a plan that would have seen for­eign ex­per­tise come to­geth­er with the lo­cal in­dus­try to de­vel­op its ex­per­tise and ca­pac­i­ty rather than con­flict.

Train­ing, ex­po­sure, part­ner­ing with for­eign con­trac­tors on ma­jor projects in a con­struc­tive rather than con­fronta­tion­al man­ner would cer­tain­ly have left the in­dus­try in a far bet­ter po­si­tion af­ter the ex­pen­di­ture of bil­lions of dol­lars. In­stead, the Gov­ern­ment went about its busi­ness, gid­dy with the bil­lions in the Trea­sury and its dream of mas­sive, show­case pieces. But even if the Prime Min­is­ter is cor­rect in his claims of shod­dy work by lo­cal con­trac­tors, the Gov­ern­ment can­not es­cape its own re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in such mat­ters. The Gov­ern­ment has and con­tin­ues to have a ma­jor su­per­vi­so­ry role in the ex­pen­di­ture of hun­dreds of mil­lions on the hous­ing projects iden­ti­fied. In­deed, the Prime Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted to the in­ef­fi­cien­cy of the Cab­i­net car­ry­ing out its su­per­vi­so­ry role by stat­ing that it is now putting ef­fec­tive man­age­ment pro­ce­dures in place.

These hous­ing projects that are now show­ing se­ri­ous con­trac­tor short­com­ings were not built by an­oth­er gov­ern­ment, they were con­struct­ed un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion. There­fore he can­not come eight years af­ter the fact to act as if his Gov­ern­ment had noth­ing to do with it. But Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning must be com­pre­hen­sive in his as­sess­ment of the hous­ing projects. He must iden­ti­fy the se­vere wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty prob­lems faced by the ten­ants. These are se­ri­ous de­fi­cien­cies in the ser­vices pro­vid­ed by Gov­ern­ment and its agen­cies. In­stead of adopt­ing this war, from which there is lit­tle pos­si­bil­i­ty of a con­struc­tive plan emerg­ing to en­hance the qual­i­ty of work of the lo­cal con­tract­ing in­dus­try, Mr Man­ning and his Gov­ern­ment must en­gage in con­struc­tive dis­cus­sion with the con­trac­tors as­so­ci­a­tions that may lead to a new be­gin­ning that re­dounds to the coun­try's ben­e­fit.