Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 11, 2017 News
-to ease existing operational challenges
Although she is no longer there, her parting wish was for a single building to house the Ministry of Social Protection. In fact, days before Minister Volda Lawrence was reassigned to the Ministry of Public Health in a recent ministerial reshuffle, she revealed her desire for this project to be swiftly brought to fruition.
But Lawrence has been stressing for quite a few months the urgency of having all of the Ministry’s activities to be in one building. The former Guyana Broadcasting Corporation building at High Street, Georgetown has been identified for this purpose.
Lawrence recently spoke of plans for an estimated $1 billion to be expended on the building to make it ready to be occupied. A sum of $200 million has already been allocated towards this end. Last year, Lawrence had expressed optimism that works to complete the existing structure would come to an end by mid-2017 and within the specified $1billion budget.
She, however, disclosed that the intent is to have the building be completed in ‘green fashion’. Construction of a green building in essence means that the structure and processes used will be environmentally friendly and resource-efficient throughout its life cycle.
“We want to make it a green building so that we can cut out the other expenses that we have. We want to do so many things with that building…” said Minister Lawrence as she underscored “it is beyond your imagination how we cope presently with having the departments in five buildings in Georgetown. It is not easy to manage at all.”
With a single building, Minister Lawrence said that the Ministry of Social Protection will be in a better position to offer a much improved service to its clients.
“Sometimes one thing leads to another…sometimes somebody comes to the Department of Labour because they are out of a job, we can send them to CRMA (Central Recruitment and Manpower Agency) and help them to be able to find a job. If they don’t have food they can go to Difficulty Circumstances (Unit) and we can look after them; if they have kids in school and they need help we can take care of that,” noted Lawrence.
While the Ministry offers a wide variety of social services, Lawrence underscored that currently the state of affairs is “if we send them to the Department of Labour and we send them to get a job, we have to send them to Cornhill Street, and if they need assistance for any of their needs then they have to come to Lamaha Street…sometimes that person doesn’t even have money to get to Cornhill Street, and so these are some of the things that we will be able to close the gap on”.
It is for this reason, Minister Lawrence insisted, that “we are very excited about the building…” Although the building was initially earmarked for the Social Protection Ministry, it was subsequently handed over to the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC). But according to Minister Lawrence, “GGMC, given the type of equipment that they have, the building in its present state could not fit their needs.”
As such, the building was returned to the Social Protection Ministry.
“We had looked at the building and we had the engineers from the Ministry of Public Infrastructure go there with us, we had our people go there with us too, and so it has been an on-going something …finally, we have been able to get the go-ahead, and I can tell you it is like Christmas Day for us (Social Protection Ministry),” said Minister Lawrence.
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