AT EASE! New JDF barracks stalled

THE FAILURE of Government actors to pin down the details for the construction of barracks for the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) has resulted in the project been pushed back to next fiscal year.

Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller had announced the rebuilding of the Lathbury Barracks at Up Park Camp in her 2012 Budget presentation.

But the 2013-2014 Supple-mentary Estimates tabled in the House of Representatives last Tuesday indicates that $340 million of the $430 million which was allocated in the Budget for the barracks works will not be spent this year. In addition, only $33 million of $150 million set aside last April for the repair of other JDF facilities is being spent this year.

In the case of the barracks, the National Housing Trust is to purchase government lands owned by the commissioner of lands for the facilities. The money would then be placed in the Consolidated Fund and JDF's engineering department would have the job to construct barracks and dormitories to accommodate 1,400 soldiers, accommodations for 140 senior enlisted officers and 70 officers, storage areas, lecture rooms, and offices.

"There were some problems in identifying the lands first, and now that I gather they have identified the lands, they are now doing the transfers," permanent secretary in the works ministry, Audrey Sewell, told the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee of Parliament last Thursday.

Committee members, already fuming over the fact that several capital projects have been shelved because they were not ready for implementation, were not amused by the response.

"Is this not a typical example of what we are talking about,?" declared opposition member Audley Shaw.

"We put it in the Budget, the land was hardly identified, much less the details of the transfers figured out. It is a typical example of whether this should have been put in the Budget in the first place," Shaw said.

PROJECTS NOT READY

There has been a $7.9-billion cut in capital projects for the 2014 fiscal year, which Financial Secretary Devon Rowe said was mainly due to the fact that many of the projects were not ready for implementation.

Deputy Financial Secretary Lorris Jarrett told the committee that with the finance ministry now in possession of a study which has identified the main reasons for poor implementation the matter has to be addressed.

"Changes will have to be made in terms of the project identification, project implementation, with screening of projects first to ensure that they are relevant, they are appropriate and ready. There is also the process of prioritisations in order to determine whether or not there is fiscal space that is available to take on a project at that point in time," Jarrett said.

The deputy financial secretary gave the assurance that the entire project management cycle would be overhauled to ensure that a project like the JDF barracks does not get included in the Budget unless there is certainty that it is ready for implementation.