PSTU against Gov't renting private properties

Chief Executive Officer of the Public Sector Transformation Unit (PSTU) Patricia Sinclair-McCalla is advocating developing more Government properties across the island.

She says that this would reduce the high sums being paid to rent office space for various ministries, departments, and agencies. Her call comes against the background of the state of disrepair into which many Government-owned properties have fallen.

Speaking at a two-day Public Sector Transformation Committee seminar at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston, on Wednesday, Sinclair-McCalla la-mented that the State paid an average of J$1.1 billion to J$1.4 billion per annum for rent between 2004 and 2010.

Unsustainable

"We have ministries paying as high as J$123 million per annum for rental, and entities paying as high as J$52 million for rental, (which is) unsustainable," she contended, while pointing to the accruable returns which could materialise from using its own resources.

Sinclair-McCalla also voiced the PSTU's concern about the standard of some public buildings and facilities, rueing their lack of maintenance.

"We build things and we do not maintain them. So in the long term, it costs us more. We have to build, and we have to maintain," she said.

Participants in the seminar included members of the PSMC, permanent secretaries, and heads of agencies, public-sector employees, and representatives of the private sector.- JIS