IT is clear from Housing and Environment Minister Dr. Roodal Moonilal’s announcement of the plan to purchase (or lease – it is still not clear) a light aircraft at undisclosed price but with maintenance costs of $3 million a year, that the PP administration has still not developed a philosophical governance framework or any policy which will guide its use of State resources that appears to be as profligate as its much maligned predecessor.
Dr. Moonilal’s announcement was made on the same day that Dr. Tim Gopeesingh announced that the Ministry of Education intended to break the monopoly of the State-owned National Maintenance and Training Services Company Limited (MTS) for the provision of security services at the nation’s several secondary schools.
It came in the week we discovered that the Ministry of Agriculture purchased a luxury vehicle based solely on its showroom price without comparing attendant transaction costs including service and spare parts. So it should not have come as a surprise that also in that very week Parliament began debate on a Variation of Appropriations Bill to increase the 2011 Budget by $2.7 billion or 6.3 percent over the previously budgeted estimates.
It is astounding that a Government which campaigned against the profligacy of its predecessor to a public grown weary of quixotic expenditure could so eschew any notion of cost-benefit analysis in its spending. If it looks and sounds nice, buy it.
On the one hand Dr. Gopeesingh was articulating a policy that could only lead to the eventual closure of a profitable State-owned enterprise established at great cost and for particular purposes with taxpayers’ money. MTS, as a State-owned company, is unionised, has to pay above the minimum wage and be OSHA compliant. It will now have to compete in an industry where such considerations are not the norm.
This column supports divestment of the too many State-owned companies offering services best performed by the private sector. This must, however, be done within some policy framework and not at the whim of a Government minister with some pet peeve. There must also be consideration for the workers and other stakeholders affected by the sudden change in the status quo.
But clearly there is no such policy since, on the very day that Gopeesingh is opening up the provision of school security services to competition, Moonilal is articulating a need for the Ministry of Housing and the Environment to acquire a plane to provide a service that can easily and probably more efficiently be provided by the private sector. Is there no policy guide as to which services are appropriate for the State to provide and which are not?
Given the itinerant tendencies of the Prime Minister, the more cynical among us may speculate whether the “light aeroplane” may be as easily convertible to other transportation uses as have been the National Security helicopters originally intended for search and rescue operations. There may be legitimate questions as to whether the attack on MTS is yet another attempt to facilitate players in the private security industry who were political investors in the current administration.
Such assertions could turn out to be idle speculation or just political mauvais langue but the real issue is that in the absence of any policy framework to inform the ministers and, more importantly, the public, on the government’s direction, we are likely to remain adrift, susceptible to being blown along by any passing wind.
There is a high cost to such ignorance where there appears to be no coherent policy on anything, whether it be buying cars, acquiring assets or disposing of them. The immediate cost of such whimsical spending is to some extent represented in that $2.7 billion variation in the expenditure on the 2011 Budget.
The real cost is the continued underdevelopment and economic stagnation that we all have to bear.
