Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo has expressed his dissatisfaction over the management of Government projects by the Ministry of Public Works, saying that thousands of citizens continue to be discomforted daily because of poor planning by the Ministry.

Bishop Juan Edghill serves as the Minister of Public Works, and he is assisted in the Ministry by Minister Deodat Indar, who is the Minister within the Ministry of Public Works.

Speaking during a panel discussion at the ongoing Guyana Energy Conference and Supply Chain expo, Mr. Jagdeo said the issue continues to anger him and added that regulations might be needed to bring order and structure in the execution of public projects. He said he would champion such legislation.

“I am dissatisfied with the Ministry of Public Works, they are not managing these sites well, they don’t think about the one hundred thousand people who are discomforted everyday, they just go and dig things up everywhere and when I see these things I get really angry and the President got on their case up to last week,” Jagdeo told a panel at the Guyana energy conference.

The Vice President was at the time responding to questions about Guyana’s infrastructural development and the pace at which projects are being launched and executed.

He told the conference that the infrastructural development is necessary for Guyana to keep up with its current pace of development, however, he noted that more consideration has to be given to citizens and their possible inconvenience.

“I know we are building lots of things at the same time, and we have to do it and it is causing a discomfort but for Christ’s sake lets do it with some order,” Mr. Jagdeo noted.

Mr. Jagdeo stated that the quality of work and claims of corruption in the sector continue to be issues that the government is examining. He said while the Government has been putting safeguards in place, the problems still exist.

“I agree that sometimes we can improve on the construction, but often it is people you are dealing with we have been public about corruption in Guyana, we have seen one family would have four or five companies establish in different names and when they bid they breach the tender process, we have also spoken about engineers who do shoddy work in the design or who may take some bribe to pass work that is not done properly,” Mr. Jagdeo noted.

The Vice President said Government has noted complaints about the construction sector and has no intention to ignore those complaints.

The Government has been spending billions of dollars as part of its massive infrastructural push. More than $400 billion was allocated in this year’s budget for various infrastructural projects that will be undertaken by different Ministries.

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