Richard?Lord

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said yes­ter­day the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny (EF­CL), un­der the for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, was "a run­away horse do­ing what­ev­er it want­ed with­out con­sult­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion."

Gar­cia, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), made the com­ment dur­ing his maid­en con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment dur­ing yes­ter­day's 2016 bud­get de­bate.

The EF­CL is a spe­cial pur­pos­es state com­pa­ny set up to build and re­pair schools. But, ac­cord­ing to Gar­cia, its "ar­bi­trary ap­proach to con­struc­tion and re­pairs has re­sult­ed in the ad­min­is­tra­tion be­ing sad­dled with the sum of $600 mil­lion cur­rent­ly be­ing owed to con­trac­tors."

Gar­cia told leg­is­la­tors: "Con­trac­tors have told me, in many in­stances, they were told that their bids (to con­struct schools) were too small and they need to jack it up.

He said he was al­so "told that cer­tain high of­fi­cials de­mand­ed their cut," adding that "what I am cer­tain of is that con­trac­tors have been com­ing to my home com­plain­ing that they have not been paid for work done."

Gar­cia said the new EF­CL board would have to ad­dress that mat­ter im­me­di­ate­ly and that it "will in­ves­ti­gate and au­dit this com­pa­ny."

With­out nam­ing the in­sti­tu­tion, Gar­cia said "a pri­ma­ry school had an en­tire floor added with­out any ap­proval or dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion." Such in­ci­dents, he said, were not iso­lat­ed ones.

Gar­cia said every­where he has since vis­it­ed he was faced with "a re­cur­ring theme of con­struc­tion de­lays, in­flat­ed costs and poor qual­i­ty work."

He said de­spite the es­tab­lish­ment of the com­pa­ny "we con­tin­ue to be faced with the peren­ni­al prob­lem of in­com­plete re­pairs and the clo­sure of schools."

Ac­cord­ing to Gar­cia, there was "the spec­ta­cle of the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of schools pri­or to the gen­er­al elec­tion, even with stu­dents in at­ten­dance dur­ing the school va­ca­tion." He not­ed, how­ev­er, that many of the schools were not ready for oc­cu­pan­cy.

But in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, for­mer ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh de­nied Gar­cia's claim, say­ing the EF­CL con­struct­ed 102 schools and an ad­di­tion­al 19 were un­der con­struc­tion when the elec­tion was called.

Gopeesingh told the T&T Guardian the com­pa­ny re­paired and com­plet­ed main­te­nance projects in "more than 800 schools dur­ing the pe­ri­od and the val­ue for mon­ey was great."

He said some in­di­vid­ual schools still have prob­lems be­cause "you can't deal with all. Schools are break­ing down every day and he will have to deal with that. We dealt with af­fect­ed schools when we were there," he added.

He in­sist­ed: "EF­CL is ab­solute­ly no run­away horse. They have done a great job."

He al­so de­fend­ed the com­pa­ny, say­ing it did not en­gage in any ar­bi­trary con­struc­tion of schools and not­ed it was pos­si­ble Gar­cia came to his con­clu­sions be­cause he may have spo­ken to the project man­ag­er and not the CEO.

He al­so said the amount of mon­ey Gar­cia claimed was be­ing owed to con­trac­tors was in­cor­rect. He said on­ly "about $300 mil­lion (was owed) for pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, EC­CE cen­tres and re­pair pro­grammes."

But Gopeesingh said the process for pay­ment was "ex­treme­ly bu­reau­crat­ic," adding that "by the time they (con­trac­tors) put in their in­voic­es to be paid by the Min­istry of Fi­nance it has to come through the EF­CL, then the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, then to the Min­istry of Fi­nance and then to the Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts, then back to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (and) then to EF­CL. "

"That process takes months and there­fore a lot of peo­ple were caught up in that de­lay as a re­sult of the bu­reau­cra­cy in the sys­tem," he said.