‘Cushy office’ scale down - Civil society advocates question Gov’t decision-making as backlash leads to pull back on NaRRA office space . PM warns adjustment will slow roll-out of projects, impact delivery

The Government’s decision to scale down the office space that will house the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA) and cut rental costs, though welcomed, is raising questions about the quality of analysis behind government lease agreements, civil society advocate Carol Narcisse has said.

“The decision-making clearly has to be more thoughtful about identifying needs and making sure that what we are expending is commensurate with what is needed and what is sufficient,” Narcisse told The Gleaner yesterday.

She also urged citizens to demand accountability for how tax dollars are spent.

“We really need to be way more demanding that how our resources are expended is justifiable, is based on alternatives being considered, and we understand what those alternatives were or are, and the reason why they are rejected, and also based on an actual determination of need and value for money.”

The Government faced intense public backlash after NaRRA, the agency tasked with leading Jamaica’s post-Hurricane Melissa recovery, revealed on Monday that it would be paying $115 million yearly to be housed at the Digicel building in downtown Kingston on a five-year lease.

The move provoked widespread protests across the island, with critics arguing that the money should be used to help those still recovering nearly a year after the Category 5 storm.

On Wednesday, during a post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House in St Andrew, Information Minister Dr Dana Morris Dixon said the Government had listened to the views of the people and that the reduced space could now cost about half the initial figure.

Morris Dixon said that particular building was considered because of its resilience, functionality and central location.

She also stressed that the initial rent costs reflected market conditions.

And declaring that the Government “would never compromise its ability to provide for the people who are in need by involving in an expenditure that was wasteful”, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness said the lease revision would also result in the Government scaling the staging of NaRRA.

“What that means is that we were contemplating a very fast and full roll-out of NaRRA to get as much of the projects out there as we can,” he said.

“We’re not going to do the full launch out as we would want, which in a way is sad because it is going to impact the delivery of projects as quickly as we would like,” Holness said yesterday as he addressed the Office of the Prime Minister’s Strategic Planning and Budget Retreat at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel in St Andrew.

However, Narcisse said she was left rather perplexed by the prime minister’s statement and wants Holness to elaborate further.

“The prime minister needs to give the nation further and better particulars as to why a smaller space is going to mean less output. Give us the details, don’t just throw that out,” she said. “We need to understand what informs that assertion.”

Meanwhile, fellow advocate Kay Osbourne was indifferent towards the Government’s proposed review and argued that the lease agreement was indefensible, “whether it’s for one or two floors of the building”.

“The fiscally irresponsible lease decision reveals, once again, a pattern of self-serving government decisions that are counter to the people’s interests,” she said. “Any NaRRA expenditure must be essential, proportional, and demonstrably in the public interest. NaRRA’s lease arrangement fails each of these criteria.”

Further, she pointed out that the entire team does not need to be in “cushy offices” in Kingston.

“Certain executives and others should be housed in Kingston to access government ministries and agencies they necessarily will need to collaborate on a range of initiatives. However, NaRRA team members who will engage in actual reconstruction work, such as engineers and construction managers, ought to be housed in the western part of the island to ensure efficient and cost-effective implementation of projects in Westmoreland, Hanover, St Elizabeth – where the work will be done,” she stated.

Opposition Leader Mark Golding also urged the Government to share with the public the efforts that were made to find suitable premises in public ownership.

He pointed to Section 4, subsection 4 of the NaRRA Act, which states that the authority “shall, if lawful and practicable, utilise existing capacity, resources, facilities, and systems in government which may be appropriately co-opted for the purposes of this act”.

“The Government is looking to lease at market rates property from the private sector to house NaRRA, even though the legislation which established NaRRA expects NaRRA to use public facilities wherever possible. The Government needs to come clean on this and explain what the situation really is,” Golding said.

In the meantime, political commentator Lloyd B. Smith questioned why the lease agreement was not brought before Cabinet.

“I really believe that this should have been a Cabinet decision, and not left to an agency (National Land Agency). I think that was an irresponsible way to go about it, especially seeing that is a new situation that is developing, one which is very high- profile,” he told The Gleaner.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com