Minister of Education Priya Manickchand this morning led delegation to the University of Guyana’s Turkeyen campus where she inspected several building projects which are currently ongoing.
The team comprised of Chief Engineer Mr. Ronald Eastman and Permanent Secretary in the Ministry Mr. Alfred King.
The Minster was also joined by the Vice-Chancellor Professor Paloma Mohamed and the Director of Estates and Maintenance Mr Bjorn Williams as well as Mr Carmichael Thorne, Deputy Director of Maintenance.
The Minister met with three of the four contractors at the Turkeyen sites for the University’s new Human Resources and Bursary Building (contractor S,Gadraj), The Pump house (contractor R; Kissoon) which is intended to drain the campus and relieve it from continuous flooding during heavy rains, and the modernization of the Turkeyen Campus’
sewerage project (contractor, S. Jagmohan) which is replacing the decrepit 55 year old sewerage system with a new system which also will cater for future expansion of the campus.
The Minister, in her engagements with the contractors, reiterated the government’s tough stance on defaulting contractors. She explained the effects of projects with extensive delays not only rob beneficiaries of the services for which the state has allocated monies, but also adds stress on the systems and blocks up fiscal space. She also warned that those defaulting contractors will be held accountable.
State capital projects for UG are generally executed by the Ministry of Education from funds
allocated by the Ministry of Finance. Of nine projects approved in 2019, four larger and more complex projects have not been completed on time for many reasons.
Issues are aligned to culture of the work and workers in construction contexts, weather, technical coordination, and several challenges connected to the eight month national disruption and Covid conditions in the special year of 2020.
The Ministry and University are pushing to ensure that all projects are settled before the complete return to normal habitation of the campus.
To this end, the University of Guyana’s administration approached Council in 2020 and Council approved an internal Project Management and Procurement Unit for the University to address perennial problems in those areas.
