00:00A routine parliamentary inquiry into potholes and paving by the Joint Select Committee on June 24th
00:05quickly exposed tension between the Ministry of Works and the municipal corporations.
00:11Permanent Secretary at the Works Ministry Ian Ramdehin didn't hold back.
00:15He claims the Ministry's technical staff are being aggressively targeted by politicians at meetings such as the JSC.
00:22The challenge we face at this meeting is that it's a chairman of a regional corporation which carries a political
00:34status
00:36talking down and degrading the officers at the meeting, blaming us for roads that we don't really manage.
00:45That would include all local government roads.
00:48The Ministry of Works further alleged a shocking lack of accountability at a local government level,
00:54citing evidence of state-owned aggregates and limestone vanishing into backyards from unsecured stockpiles.
01:02But JSC member Vandana Mohit swiftly hit back, denying allegations of abuse
01:07and redirecting the blame towards a sluggish, overly bureaucratic system
01:12where requests are made at the meetings to reps from the Works Ministry.
01:16The follow-up proving to be a main point of contention.
01:20When these representatives have no response because they have no material
01:27or they ask for the material through the said Ministry of Works,
01:32they are not getting it or its equipment is not available
01:37or they don't have any manpower to do the works,
01:42the political arm becomes a little bit frustrated
01:45and they may ask the question,
01:48well, this is the third or fourth time I'm requesting this
01:51and I'm not getting a response.
01:53I don't see that as abuse.
01:55The JSC heard that regional corporations are operating with a staggering deficit in resources.
02:02Out of more than 2,800 tons of asphalt requested for this fiscal year
02:07to treat failing infrastructure, central government was only able to provide a meager 75 tons.
02:14Those documents were submitted to the Ministry of Works three months now.
02:19I've been trying to get information, why haven't we received any hot mix
02:24because we have lost the entire dry season now.
02:28With the dry season squandered and equipment falling into disrepair due to minuscule maintenance budgets,
02:34some corporations have been forced to rely on private business partnerships
02:38and citizen donations just to patch basic holes.
02:42The reason why not much of the potholes are fixed is because of the resources.
02:48And you would know, and this committee should know,
02:50that with respect to recurrent expenditure, the resources are limited.
02:54So when sometimes we get 12 or 15 tons annually, it doesn't go a long way.
03:02The Ministry of Works has promised to formalize standard operating procedures
03:07and implement artificial intelligence drone technology to better map road defects.
03:12However, for the thousands of motorists navigating the holes in the roads daily,
03:18structural fixes to this highly fractured system cannot come soon enough.
03:23Alicia Boucher, TV6 News.
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