Asses and assets

THIS PAST week, as I browsed through various articles in our local newspapers, I picked up on a theme of under-performing state agencies, scarce resources and questionable management of government assets. Without a doubt, the ability of various agencies to consistently offer quality services is inescapably influenced by issues surrounding not just the scarcity of financial and physical resources, but also a paucity of suitable management.

It is fair to say that financial resources are an ever-scarce commodity for any government, especially given the mountain of needs that they are expected to address. Physical resources are intrinsic to the availability of financial resources: these are what it takes to get the job done, but they often come at colossal costs.

Lastly there are the human resources. In order to get the right person for the right job at the right time, governments should be prepared to spend extra, with the expectation that the added competence will pay for itself in the medium to long term.

This all seems like asset management 101; however, our day-to-day realities would suggest that there is a lack of understanding, or mere disregard of, these fundamentals on the part of successive governments.

CORRUPTION AND INCOMPETENCE

Where corrupt practices exist within government entities, public funds are wasted in underwriting substandard goods and services, whether it be the purchase, use and disposal of physical resources, or the contracting of external services. Without appropriate safeguards against substandard quality, public funds stand to be misapplied, misappropriated and otherwise wasted, with the most vulnerable in society being deprived of critical goods and services as a result.

In other instances, competence comes into question where value-for-money issues arise. Case in point is the $35 million recently spent in purchasing 1,000 garbage bins for public spaces at $35,000 each, while faltering garbage collection remains a nuisance.

Corruption and incompetence cannot take place in a vacuum: they are peopledriven issues. When government officials sidestep the right people for the job and put their asinine cronies in management positions which are above their competency level, guess what happens? When lower-level government employees are forced to grapple with corruption and incompetence from above, guess what happens? Mounting losses, procrastination and delays, exacerbated opportunity costs, low morale and reduced productivity within government. Asses cannot manage assets.

WASTE

Given that successive governments have been so strapped for financial resources, it is incomprehensible that there are so many real estate and other physical assets going to waste islandwide. In the past, I have commented on the plethora of assets, derived from criminal activities, that have been forfeited by the courts and which remain impounded and unused, rotting into nothingness: vehicles, aircraft and boats of all descriptions; millions of dollars in potential revenue being overlooked.

Then, there are lands and buildings suffering similar fate, non-performing assets laying idle and inviting impromptu settlers [squatters] to seize on the moment. For instance, when I drive through Half-Way Tree, I see the dilapidated building which once housed a government ministry and the empty structure of the former Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation.

I put it to you that if these assets were held within their private businesses, our government officials would hastily put them to good use or dispose of them, so why not take the same business-like approach with the country’s assets?

It is full time that our national resources are transformed into revenue-positive undertakings, ever bearing in mind that asses and assets make for vulgar fractions. Where added value is to be realised, extra costs are justifiable, whereas opportunity costs owing to delays, nepotism and corruption are repugnant. Quality people beget quality services, asses beget asininity.