Plans on the cards to better resource MTW stations

By Sheria Brathwaite

The Ministry of Transport and Works (MTW) is transforming its depots across the island to better respond to issues in various communities, Minister Santia Bradshaw said on Tuesday as she admitted that they were not adequately serving residents.

During the Estimates Debate, Bradshaw said she was aware that the 13 depots had some deficits.

However, she assured her ministry was looking into the matter, deeming it “a work in progress”.

She was responding to comments by Member of Parliament for St Michael West Christopher Gibbs that the depots were severely under-resourced.

Referencing projects in his constituency that have been stalled due to a lack of materials, Gibbs said such issues were “a real humbug” to residents and he questioned whether there was a plan to outfit the depots so they could operate more effectively.  

Bradshaw said that over the past year, her ministry had decentralised the services of the substations to improve service delivery but there were challenges.

She explained that there was an “inequality” that existed among the depots as all did not have the same types of resources.

Minister Bradshaw said workers also need to be trained to properly identify problems and use a standardised system to address issues.

She acknowledged that the ministry had to assess its infrastructure and determine if it was meeting people’s needs, and work with the Ministry of Finance to ensure necessary resources were acquired.

“I do feel that it requires, at this point as we are trying to modernise MTW, a different approach to the rationalisation of the depots,” she said. 

“A lot of info coming from the depots is paper-based and we are in the process of making the transition through technology to be able to allow the central ministry to look across all of the depots to see what works have been completed and what was in progress.

“What I am speaking of is a transformation in the way business has traditionally been done at the ministry and, therefore, it is going to take some retraining and retooling of the existing staff. It is going to take a rationalisation of the services that are offered by the depots. It is going to take a rethink of whether each depot should offer the same services or whether, in the rationalisation, we look at outfitting specific depots to do specific things given all of the issues of transportation and those types of things. More importantly, [it] is forcing us to look at our human resource capacity – whether we are fit for purpose, [if] we have the right technical people in place [and if] we have enough technical people in place,” Bradshaw added.

In this regard, the Transport Minister said some of the responsibility needs to be taken off the deputy chief technical officer of operations Philip Tudor who currently has a wide range of tasks.

“I do feel we now need to move to a point where we have a head of depots who can monitor, through the technology, what is happening at the depots [and] also through the assistance of the chief technical officer be in a position to set standards,” she explained.

Permanent Secretary Mark Cummins added that it was difficult to complete work when some senior skilled workers went on leave, noting that the ministry was in need of at least 15 people to fill technician II posts. 

sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb