There is constant talk about the government wasting money on projects. It is the view that some of these projects are unnecessary while all of them are poorly undertaken.
An unnecessary project is one that is merely undertaken to satisfy a limited few but which is meaningless in the general scheme of things. Some of the schools being constructed are considered unnecessary for many reasons.
Prime among the reasons is the fact there are just not enough children and certainly no teacher to populate and staff these new schools. Information coming out of the North West District is that a secondary school is being built not far from an existing secondary school in a relatively sparsely populated area.
Of course the commissioning of the building is going to be a grand affair with ribbon-cutting and speeches. A visit to the school one year later would leave people scratching their heads. Windows would be falling out and lavatories would be broken.
I listened to an interview a few days ago and I understood the situation. The contractors would use windows constructed for use on residences. These are not intended for the schools where they would be used by countless children. The panes fall out. Sometimes entire windows are displaced.
The lavatories would be those used in some residences and therefore not intended for the constant use in schools.
Cracks soon appear on the buildings because the foundations are substandard. There was the school built at the corner of Brickdam and Camp Street by a visiting team of army engineers from the United States army.
That school was intended to replace the demolished St Mary’s Primary School. That building was never used. It turned out that the ventilation was poor. It was money down the drain. Fortunately, the construction was funded by the United States. But the plan was conceived by Guyanese engineers.
The school at Bamia is a long way from completion. It was intended to take children from a large catchment area. Those children are still in limbo two years after the school should have been completed.
If it is ever completed, the ribbon cutting would be a grand affair but there would be a problem. Who would staff the school? Bodies could be put in place but the results would be the same as is the case in all the hinterland locations.
There have not been many passes in Mathematics and English at any hinterland location at the last external examinations. St Ignatius Secondary and Annai Secondary are the largest secondary schools in Region Nine.
This year, of 156 students taking the exams from St Ignatius Secondary, twelve secured passes in Maths and English. At Annai, of 109, a mere eight secured passes in Maths and English.
In Region Eight, the secondary school built at a cost of nearly $900 million—and the initial construction was condemned—figures were not available. But at the opening, there were glowing statements and fantastic promises.
The Education Minister spoke of graduating some 1,700 teachers this year. The quality of these teachers is to be tested. What has been tested is the promise to take quality secondary education to all parts of the country.
Sadly, Guyanese do not follow up on statements. Had they been doing so, by now they would have been questioning the expenditure on these hinterland schools. Of course, most Guyanese do not even know the locations and seem not to care.
At the same time many children are going to school on near empty stomachs. This would impact their brain development and therefore their examinations results.
There are also large expenditures on hospitals. The structures are one thing, staffing is another. The government seems bent on importing foreign nurses and doctors to staff these hospitals.
At present local nurses are spending time teaching some of the imported nurses rudimentary English. They may be teaching these foreigners Creolese because had the nurses been proficient in English they would not have been nurses.
Second, the government would have been more respectful and would have been paying them much better. Under their watch women die giving birth. On Tuesday, another died at the New Amsterdam Hospital.
The woman was 35. This was her fifth pregnancy. Information suggests that the baby is alive. The doctor is incommunicado and the Chief Executive Officer will not comment. Under such conditions, one can only assume that the hospital is at fault. But the government is building more hospitals.
It goes without saying that the government is building roads, many roads. These take longer than usual to be completed, are built by people least qualified to build roads and cost a lot money. To crown it all, some of these roads deteriorate one year after being commissioned.
The Soesdyke Linden highway was built in 1968 to last twenty years. It stood up for nearly 30 years with nary a crack nor a pothole. The same cannot be said for Heroes Highway commissioned a year ago or the just completed Schoonord to Crane roadway.
Leader of the Alliance For Change, Nigel Hughes, has said that the reaction of the public to the new roads is rooted in the fact that they are accustomed to substandard work.
Former Finance Minister Winston Jordan holds the view that these things are happening because the government wakes up one morning and decides on a programme without any feasibility study. There is no planning.
The government itself confirms what Jordan says. “We come up with ideas as we go along”. There is bound to be waste and willful waste makes woeful want.
So when one wonders why there is skyrocketing cost of living and frozen wages, one knows why. One also knows why with all the money at the government’s disposal the electricity situation is as bad as the days when Guyana had no oil revenue.
