One of the most egre­gious “sins” com­mit­ted by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in its nine years and sev­en months in pow­er, is that it left un­fin­ished con­struc­tion projects that were start­ed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that there were 39 schools that were in­com­plete af­ter close to a decade of be­ing left to rot and de­cay, in­clud­ing the Shi­va Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege and Par­vati Girls’ Hin­du Col­lege.

Mil­lions of dol­lars would have been spent con­struct­ing these schools, which were left for years to fall in­to ru­in.

This is not on­ly a waste of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, but thou­sands of stu­dents would have been in­con­ve­nienced be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2015 and April 2025, in not hav­ing a pri­ma­ry or sec­ondary school close to them.

Even more egre­gious, if on­ly be­cause of the sum of mon­ey spent on the project, is the Debe cam­pus of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Orig­i­nal­ly pro­ject­ed to cost $499 mil­lion, the con­struc­tion of the ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion fa­cil­i­ty was ex­pect­ed to start in Jan­u­ary 2013 and be com­plet­ed in De­cem­ber 2014. Cost over­runs are es­ti­mat­ed to have pushed the cost clos­er to $600 mil­lion.

The cam­pus was sub­stan­tial­ly com­plet­ed when the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship demit­ted of­fice in Sep­tem­ber 2015. In­stead of en­sur­ing that the cam­pus was com­plet­ed and put to use in ed­u­cat­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of young pro­fes­sion­als, the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion treat­ed the Debe cam­pus as though it did not ex­ist.

This ne­glect of state build­ings is in­com­pre­hen­si­ble and dis­grace­ful, and the re­spon­si­ble mem­bers of the PNM Cab­i­net, up to and in­clud­ing for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, must ac­count to the peo­ple of this na­tion for their fail­ure to spend the re­quired mon­ey to open these build­ings.

If the PNM’s think­ing was that com­plet­ing and open­ing build­ings start­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion would have placed a favourable spot­light on an op­pos­ing par­ty, that is a spite­ful and small-mind­ed ap­proach to gov­er­nance. The schools and the uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus be­long to all cit­i­zens of T&T and not to any po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

The new ad­min­is­tra­tion is there­fore placed on no­tice that the na­tion will not tol­er­ate a re­peat of the wastage of state funds un­der­tak­en over the last decade.

Even giv­en the dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic pe­ri­od that T&T is go­ing through at this time, the Gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to com­plete and open the Cen­tral Block of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion head­quar­ters in St Clair, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment build­ing on Tra­garete Road in the cap­i­tal and the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go.

The Gov­ern­ment should al­so con­duct an au­dit of all state build­ings to en­sure that tax­pay­ers’ funds are not be­ing spent to rent or lease pri­vate build­ings, when state ac­com­mo­da­tion is avail­able.

It must al­so en­sure that it dis­cuss­es the use of the Debe cam­pus with UWI’s hi­er­ar­chy, as the prin­ci­pal of the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie An­toine, is pro­ceed­ing with plans to open the fa­cil­i­ty in Au­gust to house the Glob­al School of Med­i­cine.

Dur­ing a tour of the Debe cam­pus on Tues­day, how­ev­er, se­nior Cab­i­net mem­ber and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Roodal Mooni­lal, said he ex­pect­ed that the orig­i­nal vi­sion for the cam­pus—to com­prise a fac­ul­ty of law and an­cil­lary ser­vices—would be pre­served. Gov­ern­ment and The UWI must, there­fore, be on the same page on the Debe cam­pus.