Public Works Corporation after 9 years- is it alive or is it dead?

I am frustrated and depressed as I write about the nine years of failure of the Public Works Corporation (PWC).

Firstly, in my view the PWC of today is no fault of Government but the situation has arisen because of bad management of the various boards and the day-to-day managers.

Government decision to combine the road maintenance and the public works garage functions was a serious mistake; the consultants and the civil servants gave faulty advice to government although many lower level staff warned them that that was a bad decision. Unfortunately, some technical people believe whatever they say and think cannot be wrong so they went ahead with the privatization.

At the first board of directors meeting between management and staff I can recall clearly that a board member warned that the PWC was going to be bulldozed. The board member was right: PWC was nearly bulldozed to its death because millions of dollars that Government paid for projects and road maintenance, all were misused.

Today, after nine years, PWC has changed seven managers, five chairmen and yet the corporation has not moved an inch forward; it still cannot pay its workers and some uninformed people still want to say PWC can work. Boards and management of the past took many wrong decisions and at that time Government was giving all road maintenance works and projects to the PWC. Money flowed and they purchased all kinds of inappropriate equipment which could not produce enough income to keep the corporation afloat.

For instance, Government approved the purchase of a Phoenix 100 and the corporation bought an Apollo 1000; the managers bought a set of BOOMAG rollers, asphalt spreader and most of them did not give six months service.

From the inception I believe that the management team has never performed as they should. Management deducted Social Security contributions from workers and did not pay it to Social Security; they also did not pay Inland Revenue its dues. In my view the only two good managers the corporation had were Randy Peters and Francis Paul. The new manager has come and we thought that he came with a plan to move that place forward but … to date it is three months and workers can't get their salaries.

How can workers survive that brutality? Nobody can tell workers what is next; there is no hope for workers. People can't pay their mortgages, their bills, their debts- they are only surviving because of God's grace. If something is not done immediately workers will get mad, starve to death or start to cook their children because the situation is out of hand.

In my opinion Government should step in right away and make everybody redundant. Then start something new like probably taking back the road maintenance section to the Ministry of Public Works and either shut the garage down or reorganize it as PWG instead.

Observer.