Rhymer calls for technical group to assist gov’t decisions
BVI News Correspondent - Friday, November 19th, 2010 at 9:26 AM
Host of the programme ‘The People’s Business’ on ZBVI Radio Elihu Rhymer believes a technical group to advise government on large private and public projects being undertaken in the territory needs to be established.
Speaking on the programme last evening, Rhymer said these large projects cannot be completed overnight because they are expensive and their construction and implementation period spread over a number of years.
“In the case of public sector projects, when we consider that a government in the BVI is only given four years of office once you get elected… that is not enough time for a government, no matter how active they may be, to be able to put in place a project within that kind of time frame. And therefore, these public sector projects usually cross the political timeline, that is, one government may begin a project and another government may have to finish. Some of these projects are quite expensive and if one government starts it and has expended a tremendous amount of public funds on it, it’s very difficult for another government that might not agree with it simply because there is not consensus within the community on that particular project – whether it is a public or private sector project,” Rhymer said.
“It is essential that we put in place some kind of mechanism that will make it possible to ensure that there is public support, broad based community support for large projects whether public or private taking place within the country,” he suggested.
Rhymer said that in order to achieve this, unbiased technical people must be involved, strongly supporting community involvement and support for these ventures. “We need some facilitating body that will enable us to have large projects reviewed independently and help the public get a careful understanding of what these large projects may entail.”
Rhymer referred to the $170 million BIWater Project. “We have heading our way right now a very serious clash that is going to take place. It’s going to affect this country tremendously because we have a government that no matter what the public has said. It seems as though our government is going along with it without even deciding that, let us take a second look – that places a government coming into power in a very difficult situation, when a project involving $170m been shipped out of our country. For a small territory like this, that is money, that is not toy stuff, how can a new government look into its eyes of its people and say, I’m sorry but I have to carry on with this because to do so still is going to land us up a cleak. So the end result might be another great loss of money to simply to cure the country from a contractual obligation that should not have entered into.”
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