Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer
FIVE YEARS after he co-authored a report on cutting waste in government, respected business leader, Douglas Orane, believes not enough has been done to address the problem.
"If you look back at the report it showed savings of about $2 billion a year after the third year. The Government has made savings, but the reports I've got suggest that they are running at about $200 million a year. So the savings that are emanating from it are about 10 per cent of what was recommended," Mr. Orane told The Sunday Gleaner in a recent interview.
The Orane Committee, in its report issued January 1999, called for cost-cutting in seven main areas: Rental and space utilisation, public utility usage and charges, allowances, domestic and overseas travelling, rationalisation of overseas missions and agencies, the number of consultants in the public sector, the method of purchase of petrol and other supplies.
The committee projected that these measures would produce savings of $1.118 billion in 1999/2000, $2.386 billion in 2000/2001, and $2.514 billion in 2001/2002.
The committee also set out a Plan of Action as a guide for improved service delivery in the public sector. These included a five-minute limit for how long it should take the police to respond to emergency calls; 24 hours for transfer of real estate titles; 10 minutes to licence a car; 48 hours for delivery of local mail; and five minutes waiting time for patients at hospital Casualty departments.
Mr. Orane, while acknowledging that there have been im-provements since his committee submitted its recommendations, argued that there was still much room for improvement.
"The Government of Jamaica is not a demigod that exists to rule our lives in terms of telling us what to do at every step. We are in fact the customers and they are suppliers of services to us and we are paying them to supply such services to us," he asserted.
Wayne Jones, president of the Jamaica Civil Service Association (JCSA) is also disappointed with the pace of implementation of task force recommendations and the savings realised.
NINE-DAY WONDER
The employment of consul-tants, he said, remained a sore point for the JCSA, arguing that the number of such positions needed to be re-examined. The public outcry a year ago concerning consultants, he argued, was "a nine-day wonder, which has largely been forgotten, but which we need to go back to."
According to the Cabinet Office, however, there has been a 35 per cent reduction in the number of consultants in the civil service, while those in the parastatals had been cut by 32 per cent, for total savings of $57.2 million.
The task force had listed six overseas missions for possible closure Moscow, Lagos, Bonn, Caracas, Mexico City, and Havana which, taken together, were expected to have saved the country $134 million.
Since then only the Moscow embassy has been closed. However, the Government has reported savings of $150.6 million through other areas of rationalisation. These measures include the closure of Jamaica Tourist Board offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Frankfurt, as well as the JAMPRO office in Trinidad and Tobago. Other related measures include the relocation of the country's offices in Mexico, reduction of operating expenses of the Jamaica Defence Force offices in the United Kingdom, and consolidation of the Tourist Board operations in New Kingston.
A further $300 million has reportedly been saved through restructuring of the National Water Commission.
