Before the sun was up this morning, President Irfaan Ali was meeting with Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Engineers, and contractors who are four months and more past their contract deadline. Most of the contractors appeared to be small and medium scale contractors. The major contractors with many of the multi-million dollar projects appeared to have been spared from the meeting.

The 5:30am meeting took place at State House and was streamed across social media.

Almost all of the Government Ministries have projects that should have been completed already, while other projects have been stalled.

During the meeting, the President expressed his disappointment with the many delays in project completion across the Ministries. While the contractors were blamed for some of the delays, there appears to be a breakdown at the technical level within some Ministries to properly communicate information regarding the projects.

“From this very meeting, the approach of some of the contractors and engineers tell me that the right balance of energy is not existing for an effective project management environment. If you don’t have the right structure, organisation, attitude, you will be starting negatively” the President said.

While the contractors faced the brunt of the President’s tongue lashing, Project Engineers and some Ministers and Permanent Secretaries were not spared. It many cases, it was found that some contractors are still awaiting commencement letters from the Ministries to begin works.

The President said for those who have received their commencement letters, there should be no excuse for delays to their respective projects, and he has threatened to terminate those projects and a possible blacklisting for those contractors if works are not completed by the end of this year.

“And if you have project to be completed, finish them before you bid again, because you will find yourself not being able to bid because you will be blacklisted, because all of the projects here that are listed that are not completed before the end of the year will be terminated, and the records will be sent to the tender board” the President warned.

The President told the meeting that a number of communities are suffering because many of the projects are community based which are aimed to bring relief to citizens. He said the Government is facing criticisms from those communities because of the project delays.

Further, the President said there are also fiscal implications due to the lateness of the project.

He urged contractors with outstanding projects not to bid for any other projects until they get their house in order. Just recently, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo also met with contractors for various Government projects and also expressed similar concerns about delays in project compeltions.

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