Editorial | Taxpayers, the NWA and roads

Prime Minister Andrew Holness will likely find great sympathy for his idea of possibly expanding the National Works Agency (NWA) or creating a new body, charged with keeping the island’s roads in a better state of repair.

“... The crisis that we face with roads now, the NWA is not sufficient to manage it,” Dr Holness said last week.

This newspaper does not have a ready answer to Dr Holness’ supposed dilemma, but to suggest to the prime minister that he think carefully, and engage in meaningful discussions with all relevant stakeholders about his options, before arriving at a decision.

Put differently, Dr Holness should be wary of misdiagnosing the problem, and could well find that the solution lies not in a new institution, but improved management. Which means ensuring that taxpayers get the most out of every penny of their money that is spent, including consistently doing the little things and getting them right.

While the immediate focus is on the NWA, the demand is not only of that agency. It applies to all arms of government which have a fiduciary obligation to all citizens of Jamaica.

The NWA is an executive agency, a semi-autonomous government organisation, which, like others of its kind, is allowed to function with some of the precepts of the private sector. Its primary job is to design and manage the government’s critical infrastructure projects, as well as designated maintenance of major roads – over 5,000 kilometres of these. It also has some regulatory responsibilities.

The NWA replaced the old Public Works Department (PWD), which was believed to have grown hidebound and inefficient, as well as infected with corruption.

RECEIVING END

But, after nearly a quarter century, the NWA is often at the receiving end of many of the criticisms that dogged the PWD. The failure or inability of the NWA to maintain roads, as well as the poor execution of too many of its projects – a claim that taxpayers don’t get value for money – are among the frequent complaints.

Or, as Prime Minister Holness said, that the agency just can’t keep up with the volume of tasks that have been thrust upon it.

According to the prime minister, the agency’s original mandate was to be “the national engineers, advising government on engineering matters (and) overseeing the engineering of major construction projects”.

“Now, they are being asked to administer roads, even roads that are not under their jurisdiction … and there are other functions that have arisen under the management of roads which the NWA was not capacitated to do,” he said. “We need to be able to have rapid responses to deteriorating road conditions. We may very well have to create an entity to facilitate this … .”

Insofar as the vast majority are aware, from the time of its creation, the NWA had the responsibility for roads. It will be surprising that this may not have been entirely the case.

Further, unlike the PWD, the NWA doesn’t maintain a squadron of road repairers, available for deployment to fix a pothole, but are idle when they are not. It uses independent contractors for these jobs.

It is true that it has not always been given sufficient money to do the job, a failure of which its boss once complained to a parliamentary committee.

PROBLEM WORSENED

Indeed, this problem has worsened in the last decade, as Jamaica, in its push for macroeconomic stability and debt reduction, has scrimped on infrastructure maintenance, to the point of Prime Minister Holness declaring that Jamaica faced a road emergency.

Nonetheless, it is often frustrating to citizens to observe what, on its face, is shoddy work (or worse) by contractors and seemingly poor oversight by the agency. There was, for example, the recent case of the disintegration of long stretches of the newly built southern coastal highway because subcontractors didn’t use the prescribed raw material. Taxpayers found out because heavy rains came while the job was still under warranty.

There are legitimate questions in the circumstances of whether other sections of that road, or other projects, were sub-optimally built, and how many cents on the dollar taxpayers really receive on the job.

Or there is the frustration of an apparent lack of a coherent schedule for minor road maintenance, or to observe that a pothole is prepared for patching but weeks later the job isn’t done. And worse, noting the repair of one pothole while a larger one only feet away is left undone.

These are not matters that cry out for new ministries, departments or agencies, but rather oversight and management.

Perhaps that’s where Dr Holness should start – with an independent audit of the NWA, its mandate, and what’s to be done to improve its operations. After two decades, the time may just be right.