by TREVOR YEARWOOD

THE URBAN DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION (UDC) has close to $1 million in work which contractors have left unfinished.

Director of the UDC, George Edghill, gave this estimate yesterday.

He said up to 82 job sites had experienced problems, with more than 100 contractors failing to conclude work on projects going as far back as 2006.

The UDC was "seeking to bring closure" to the matter, "complete the jobs in a timely manner and stop the (clients) from further suffering", Edghill said.

On the value of the unfinished work, he told reporters: "I would think if you look at all the outstanding work . . . last time we counted it was over $840 000."

And he stressed that it was not a question of UDC having to "pay twice" for the same jobs.

Quantified

The work was "quantified" and reallocated among other contractors who would use funds originally earmarked, he explained.

Edghill was briefing the media after a near two-hour meeting with contractors at the Grande Salle of the Tom Adams Financial Centre.

At the meeting attended by about 70 contractors, the UDC chief repeated his concerns about "shoddy" work he had seen across 15 constituencies soon after he took up his posting on October 1.

But he admitted the UDC too had been "tardy" in some areas and also that there were contractors producing good work.

The UDC finances home-building and repairs, toilet/bathroom facilities, wells and septic tanks. It is a key agency in Government's poverty alleviation programme.

Edghill's message to contractors was: "If you want a job from UDC . . . you must be able to manage your site well, (and) do good work . . . ."

He virtually read the riot act to contractors, saying the agency would stop doing business with those "who have great difficulty" sticking with its "best practices".

Abandoned contract

And, Edghill warned that contractors whose job sites were idle for seven consecutive days would be fired because the indication was that they had "abandoned" their contract.

The director complained about contractors leaving debris on job sites to the point where clients had difficulty accessing or leaving their homes; not properly securing houses on which they had worked; and leaving clients without easy access to electricity and water.

He also took the opportunity to spell out time frames for UDC projects ranging from three weeks (digging and casing a well) to 12 weeks (the construction of a new home).

In turn, contractors raised a number of concerns, including the time frame for building houses and difficulty in receiving the first allocation to start some projects (mobilisation payment).