Bureaucracy buster - Senator calls for establishment of high-powered team to review gov’t delays
Published:Saturday | November 2, 2019 | 12:20 AMEdmond Campbell/Senior Parliamentary Reporter
Bemoaning the culture of delay and bureaucracy in Government that obstructs the speedy implementation of infrastructure projects, Senator Ransford Braham has called for a comprehensive review of how Government does business.
He has encouraged the Government to establish a high-powered team to carry out the evaluation over the next two to three years.
Braham, chairman of the Urban Development Corporation, told his colleague senators in the Upper House yesterday that since his appointment to the state body, he has experienced, first-hand, long delays in getting infrastructure projects under way.
He indicated that it was unacceptable that an infrastructure project in Government could take up to three years before the construction begins.
No more than a year, said Braham, should be the timeline for infrastructure projects to get started.
The senator’s remarks came during his contribution to the debate on two public procurement orders aimed at enabling greater participation by the micro, small and medium-sized enterprises through special and differential measures. The orders were affirmed by the Senate.
The government senator made it clear that the prolonged delays in Government were not confined to any one administration, noting that this has been a problem for decades.
REMOVING HURDLES
“We as a country … have a problem insofar as how we run the administration of our affairs, whether it is how the civil service is organised, whether it is how the procurement service is organised, whether the staffing in some government service is adequate,” Braham stated.
Meanwhile, some players in the business sector said that greater efforts should be made by Government to remove bureaucratic hurdles. The call comes despite a four-spot improvement in Jamaica’s Ease of Doing Business Global Index ranking.
The latest World Bank annual rating positioned Jamaica at 75th among 190 economies in the Ease of Doing Business Index, having received a score of 69.7 per cent.
Ease of Doing Business in Jamaica has averaged 77.09 from 2008 until 2018, reaching an all-time high of 94 in 2013 and a record low of 65 in 2015. The country’s ranking deteriorated to 75 in 2018, from 70 in 2017.
Doreen Frankson, managing director of paint manufacturer EdgeChem, has argued that the index data did not match reality.
“I personally have not experienced this ease that they are talking about because you still have to go to various places to deal with matters. To register a company is easier, but it’s still a problem,” she said.