Region 10 Council votes to extend list of evaluators

Complaints of tardiness

Councillors within the Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) Democratic Council (RDC) have agreed unanimously to expand the list of evaluators, based on numerous issues being experienced by the present set. In light of several revelations of tardiness on the part of evaluators, members of the Council, during the most recent statutory meeting, voted for an expansion.

Councillor Sandra Adams expressed grave concern that the Council’s Works Department had not spent any of its allocations; and Regional Chairman Renis Morian attributed this to tardiness on the part of evaluators.

c”My concern is (that) we’re in the month of April. A new budget cycle will start just now. In fact, other Ministries are already preparing supplementary budgets from last year. I haven’t been seeing any visible contracts advertised (for) work being done in Region 10. Where are we in terms of our contracts for this year?” Adams asked.

In response, Morian said he and members of the Works Department recently sat at Tender Board to look at the pre-qualification of contractors, but noted that 90 percent of what was received was in a confused state. He explained that evaluators have been extremely tardy, much to the disadvantage of the Council moving forward with getting its projects off the ground. As such, he asked councillors to make a decision to either expand or seek new evaluators, but warned that the latter process may be time consuming. “We have now to utilise staff internally, to go back through them (contractor’s documents), which will delay us maybe another 72 hours. And we’re already late. The time has come for us to have either an extension of persons to do evaluation, or fresh evaluators. We are not getting the best from our evaluators…what we saw coming here was confusion”, the Regional Chairman asserted.

Adams, in turn, noted her frustration over the slow manner in which things were progressing. “Sometimes I feel kind of embarrassed hearing what is happening. Other regions (have) already spent how much money already, and Region 10 ain’t even start. I can go further to say that our minister, who represented us at last budget, is concerned that after making strong arguments (she is afraid of) what she is going back to face If we don’t spend what we have. We have a Minister of Finance (who), if you don’t spend the money, he removes it from you, so you get less…Region 10 can’t afford such a thing. So we have to make a decision to move forward,” Adams noted.

Councillor Tracy Johnson also declared he would prefer the Council move in the direction of hiring newer and more efficient evaluators. However, Morian stressed that if the Council were to make the choice to go down that road, it may not complete its works programme in time for this year. He therefore made a recommendation for RDC staff to be paid to work overtime to finish off the necessary documents in an effort to move forward, and councillors gave this recommendation their full support.

Councillor Gordon Callendar further stressed that sometimes tender documents take as long as months with the present evaluators, and he urged that recommendations be put forward to facilitate the hiring of fresh evaluators. The Regional Chairman highlighted that evaluators are paid based on the amount of work they do, but noted that based on what is being submitted by some, Regional Executive Officer (REO) Gavin Clarke would have established that some evaluators “can’t get paid”. Callendar said he agreed with Clarke’s decision, noting that it “made perfect sense.”