NET calls for FAA Act changes to fast-track payment for emergency school repairs

Jamaica’s legislators are being urged to amend the Financial Administration and Audit Act (FAA Act) to enable faster payments to contractors engaged in emergency construction such as the repairing schools damaged in Hurricane Melissa.

Executive Director of the National Education Trust (NET), Latoya Harris Ghartey said while the Procurement Act has been revised to allow for emergency mobilisation, its intent is being hampered by payment delays to contractors.

“I think the gap that I have seen, really, is with the Financial Administration and Audit Act, where basically we have engaged contractors on the emergency circumstances, but the payment mechanism to support that has not followed through. So, I think that’s the area where I personally will recommend the policy change,” she said.

The FAA Act governs the management, collection, safekeeping, and disbursement of public funds

She was speaking yesterday during the National Resilience Dialogue Series, convened by the Higher Education Task Force for Disaster Resilience.

Harris Ghartey said making structural changes to build the island’s institutional capacity is essential to Jamaica recovering faster from natural disasters.

“I have to have a fully finalised contract before I can pay a contractor, but a contractor may have already put down over $30 million of work that I can verify on the ground, but I can’t pay him yet, because we’re still negotiating on a BQ (bill of quantities), for example,” she said.

It is a situation that president of the Incorporated Masterbuilders Association of Jamaica (IMAJ), Richard Mullings, said his organisation knows all too well.

“Contractors are brought in to address emergency issues, and the payment of contractors is never treated as an emergency,” he told The Gleaner.

He said this tardiness in making payments to contractors directly impacts the pace of repair works.

“You see a lot of commentary now about the availability of contractors to do the work, but the truth is, contractors will not make themselves available to do work when they are uncertain of the payment,” he said.

“We require cash flow to go to our suppliers, to pay our labour, to get the materials, to get other subcontractors on site to get things done. And if the payment is not timely and treated as a priority, then it makes it very difficult for contractors to go to the hardware and to get the material, and to tell their staff to just keep working and to keep treating this thing as a priority,” he added.

Mullings also called for an examination of the existing timelines under which contractors are paid, arguing that this issue affects their willingness to participate in government projects.

“Many contractors are not paid within a timeline set out in their contracts and are treated. This is not treated with importance or urgency by many procurement entities. And a large proportion of what is labelled as underperformance of contractors, if that was ever tracked against late payment, there would be a significant correlation,” he said.

Meanwhile, Harris Ghartey noted that $8.26 billion has been spent so far repairing schools damaged in Hurricane Melissa.

More than 600 schools were damaged during the Category 5 storm that made landfall in October last year, with 313 learning institutions deemed severely damaged.

Harris Ghartey stated that the recovery process after the hurricane is taking longer because NET, the primary agency that develops infrastructure for schools across the country, is “building back stronger”.

This, she said, is being done under the new building standards developed in December last year, which have been amplified by World Bank criteria. To date, she said 117 schools have been completed.

“A lot of our schools, we’re trying to change out from the zinc and we’re trying to go slab up where, structurally, schools can take it. That process, in and of itself, is much, much, much more complicated because we have to reinforce structures. And we have to ensure that basically the facilities can accommodate the changes that we propose or the enhanced resilient features that we propose,” she said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com