– MP says reflects poor planning
Caricom has rented space in a five-storey building at Turkeyen to accommodate some of its staff, but MP David Patterson feels this reflects poor planning since the new secretariat was only constructed four years ago.
Patterson noted too that the Caricom Secretariat grounds had sufficient land to build additional accommodation, rather than pay high rental costs.
Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon was asked on Thursday whether Guyana was paying for the rental of the building opposite the Caricom Secretariat at Turkeyen in keeping with its undertaking to provide accommodation for the Caricom headquarters. He told Stabroek News that since Guyana provided the building to house the secretariat, the staff and responsibilities of Caricom had increased, which had led Caricom to pay for additional accommodation to which Guyana was subscribing.
Apart from the staff and responsibilities increasing, Luncheon said member states were being called on to increase national subscriptions as well. Each state, he said, had to pay a minimum contribution each year to keep the secretariat running. When the budget was put together, the sum total was divided among the member states, he said, adding that Guyana was subscribing to the rental of the new building along with the others.
Asked about the rental of additional space, Communications advisor to the Secretary-General, Leonard Robertson, said that when the secretariat staff were relocated from downtown Georgetown to the new headquarters, a number of departments, such as the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV/AIDS and the Legal Drafting Facility were still housed in offices outside the building.
In addition, he said, “the assimilation of the Cariforum Secretariat into the Caricom Secretariat, the expansion of the secretariat staff to meet the obligations of 9th European Development Fund and the implementation of the CSME [Caricom Single Market and Economy], has [seen] an increase in staff which necessitated more office space.”
Robertson also confirmed that the Guyana government was not paying for the rental of the building opposite the secretariat, which was built in recent months by developer Cecil Rajana.
Patterson, a quantity surveyor by profession, told Stabroek News that sufficient accommodation in the secretariat building, constructed at a cost of in excess of $4 billion, and paid for by the Japanese and Guyana governments was an issue even before the building was handed over to Caricom.
According to Patterson, the building, which was constructed in 2004 and occupied in July 2005, never met its accommodation capacity.
“Who is to blame for this? Was it the Guyana Government or Caricom Secretariat? I don’t know,” he said, adding that the lack of adequate accommodation for staff, “showed a total lack of planning.”
He said renting another building four years after the secretariat was constructed showed there was not enough consultation between the government, the designers and the occupants; there was also no forward planning to meet future demands.
Asked to estimate the rental of the Rajana building, Patterson said based on his evaluation and that of some of his colleagues, he would put the rental at a minimum of US$30,000 a month.
He recalled that before the new secretariat building was handed over Caricom had commissioned an independent architect/evaluator to review the new building. Following the evaluation, he said, an additional $159 million was spent to reallocate air-conditioning units and to squeeze in more office space to accommodate staff from the downtown Georgetown area where they were housed in several locations including the Bank of Guyana building which was the main office.
Patterson is of the view too, that the existing Caricom grounds had plenty of space for shared infrastructure. He questioned why additional accommodation was not built in the compound as an architect could have designed a structure, which would not destroy the aesthetics of the main building. (Miranda La Rose)
