More than $48 m spent on school furniture

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Chief procurement officer in the Ministry of Education, Leon Fraser, has disclosed that more than $48 million has so far been spent on the issuance of contracts to manufacture school furniture, some of which are already being delivered.

"To date, we have ordered furniture in the region of $48 million, and that dollar value will increase as we order more furniture as we go along. Furniture is being distributed to all regions," Fraser disclosed.

But the chief procurement officer said there was a challenge accessing the eastern end of the island with the destruction of the Harbour View bridge.

"There is a challenge with the eastern end of the country, because the bridge at Harbour View was washed out and the ford that was supposed to be built was also washed out.
When the temporary ford was put in place, we managed to get some furniture out to Yallahs and to Seaforth High, and the plan was to get to other schools in that section of the island. But again, we have suffered a setback because the ford was washed out," he said.

He said the ministry was looking at other ways to get the furniture to the affected schools.

"We are hopeful that we can find some alternative route to the ford, we don't know how, but that is the major drawback right now, because we would have really addressed that situation already," he said.

"We don't know how quickly it [the ford] will be repaired so that we can resume deliveries, because we have furniture in production and we are delivering them as they come off the production line. So it's just a matter for us to really get access to the schools," he added.

Fraser said the Ministry had delivered 14,302 pieces of furniture to schools across the island up until Friday, September 19 and deliveries would continue throughout the school year "because we get requests from the regions in an ongoing manner".

"It is very expensive to supply furniture to schools. A set of desks and chairs costs over $4,000, so we need the school management and the students to actually take care of the furniture that is being supplied to the schools. I don't think a lot of them are aware of just how expensive it is, not only to manufacture the furniture ,but to deliver it," he said.

The haulage costs are also high and we want to ensure that all the stakeholders really take care of the furniture, It's one thing to ask us to provide it, but you also need to play your part," he added.

Last year the ministry delivered more than 124, 000 pieces of furniture to schools across the island.