Minister cites importance of review process in school repairs

FERRIS, Westmoreland — The importance of speed and having a review process are among the lessons education minister Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon is taking from the less-than-smooth process of repairing more than 300 schools damaged by last year’s Hurricane Melissa.

“With our contractors, you have to have multiple entities that are reviewing. There are multiple stages of review. I think we’ve also learned how to do it quicker. Because, remember, it’s 300 contracts with 300 different scopes of work. And you’re going to need to have the quantity surveyors doing their work for 300 different contracts. It’s a lot, but I do think that going through this, it will make it much easier as we’re doing projects going forward because we’re not going to be in a position to do this many [schools] again. And so we’ve really built that muscle memory to be able to do this better going forward,” stated Morris Dixon, who also spoke about steps taken to ensure buildings can cope better with future storms.

The minister was responding to queries from the Jamaica Observer while fielding questions from the media at Ferris Primary School in Westmoreland following a tour of schools in the parish on Wednesday. The other institutions visited were Maud McLeod High and Beaufort Primary schools, both located in Darliston.