Six Government ministries and departments were identified as having the most delays in capital constructions.

This was highlighted by the Attorney General and Minister for Finance, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum at the opening of the Capital Projects Implementation Workshop yesterday.

These were the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Ministry for Infrastructure, Police, Military and the Judiciary.

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said although their requests have been made, various processes have not been put in place and stated; work should start this year for the implementation of the capital construction for next year.

He said: “What happens is that the tenders may be called in the 3rd quarter of the year. Last week for example, I had files on my desk where everybody’s asking for waivers of tenders or saying we need to waive tenders because this is a very important piece of construction that needs to take place.

“The allocation was made in the beginning of the year, nothing was done and suddenly by November it’s become urgent. If it was, it should have been planned for in the previous year.”

He added: “When we allocate money in the budget, we say for example a particular capital project is allocated $10 million, we expect that $10 million to be spent in that year.

“If the ministries strictly know that they can’t spend it, please don’t ask for it because it makes our deficit higher and that we find happens all the time.”

Mr Sayed-Khaiyum also highlighted they will now merge major construction work through the Ministry of National Planning.

“We are going to centralise major construction works now through the ministry of national planning.

“It is very critical to do that because what we find is that apart from the tender works being slowed down, people when they come in to request for funding for particular projects, it’s more of a idea as opposed to it actually being ready to be implemented. But the other issue of course is that the quality of work is not good.”