By Chantalé Fletcher
THE Monkey Town Government Primary was one of many other school construction projects under the Debt Service Repayments, so therefore no funding was awarded for fiscal year 2022.
This according to Finance Minister Colm Imbert during the second session of the Standing Finance Committee in Parliament on Monday.
In response to Opposition MP for Oropouche West, Davendranath Tancoo, he said, “In the last number of years, we had to raise significant amounts of money in loan financing to use the National Maintenance Training and Security Company Limited (MTS) to complete a lot of these construction projects with the debt service repayments appearing in the estimates.
“So, there was a number of school construction projects in particular which would not be identified on a unique basis in these estimates, but the debt service payments would be identified in due course.”
Imbert added, “There were a number of schools that would not appear in this book but be part of a general construction programme based on a guarantee loan and state enterprise and would be off budget until the debt service payments come into estimates.”
Meanwhile MP Tancoo was directed to Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly on whether security services would be given to the schools that were not utilised to prevent acts of vandalism.
Dr Gadsby-Dolly responded, “In cases where the schools have been handed over, this was being continuously done but in some cases the schools were not handed over, therefore they would not have been allocated by the Ministry of Education.”
However, in regards to ongoing mobilisation and demobilisation costs associated with contracts of the schools that were not in use, Imbert said, “As we re-start some of these projects, there would be costs of that nature on a case-by-case basis.”
He said, “However, as we re-mobilise the construction, it’s going to cost us billions as a country and all those costs would be taken in consideration with the loan financing.”
