The administration is seeking to address the sloth in the delivery of goods and services in the various regions, to ensure that the beneficiaries receive the same expeditiously. This is something it has spoken of often in previous years during its cabinet outreaches.
During his weekly post-Cabinet briefing yesterday, Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon told the media that recent visits by the administration to regions 1,2,6,8 and 10 by President Bharrat Jagdeo, Prime Minister Samuel Hinds and several government ministers have allowed for several aspects of development to be examined.
He listed a review of special and specific projects and commissioning exercises, an examination of the adequacy of delivery of goods and services and an assessment of “newer” regional proposals and interventions put forward by leaders for support of administration as issues arising out of the visits. He said that Cabinet, in consideration of the report on its findings, recognised that there was need for improving delivery of goods and services in the administrative regions at the level of the end users.
He said, “It would seem evidence is accumulating, that regional focal points receive goods and services from the centre in Georgetown,” but he noted that there is sloth in such goods and services arriving at “the schools [and] hospitals, at the community level.” According to Luncheon, the administration is at the moment examining additional interventions to enhance the movement from the regional centres to end users.
He also said that regional programmes, especially those in the health, education, and social sectors, have pointed to shortages in planning in the annual budget for which remedies can be put in place at Cabinet level.
Luncheon said that funding the provision of more adequate utility services in the administrative regions, particularly in the Hinterland regions where there is need for better collaboration between law enforcement and utilities, is being considered.
When asked to elaborate on the specific measures being put in place by Cabinet to address the delivery of goods and services, he noted that the delivery of school books to the Region Nine community of Lethem for further delivery to the South Rupununi can be utilised.
He said that school books would be transported to the main administrative centre in the region in advance of the beginning of the school year in September each year but such items only arrive at the end users in the South months later.
He said that ideally the multiple step processes to have such items delivered should be reduced and specific contractors would be offered contracts to ensure the timely delivery of goods. He noted that there is “a downside to it,” which would be examined before such a system is implemented in order to ensure “misadventure does not take place.”
Meantime, Luncheon noted that the administration has passed instructions that with immediate effect the separate public health facilities at appropriate levels in the various administrative regions would execute individual and specific service contracts by which the specific facilities will be monitored on patient care standards to which they commit. The information obtained, would now be specific for each health facility within each region and not consolidated, as is done at the moment, on the basis of regional performances.
