BLP chided for quibbling over contracts

GOVERNMENT MP Denis Kellman yesterday charged that while the Opposition Barbados Labour Party was “splitting hairs” about contracts at Constant, St George, no one had complained about the National Housing Corporation’s delivery of houses for Barbadians.His comments came on Tuesday in the House of Assembly during debate on a resolution to vest 2.76 hectares of Crown land at Constant in the National Housing Corporation for housing development.“What is interesting is that I am not hearing that anything is wrong at Constant. All I am hearing is ‘no contract’. But I am not hearing that the houses are too expensive,”  he said.Kellman said the BLP administration had contracts with construction projects at places such as Warrens, St Michael; Mount Poyer, St Lucy; the Post Office, the Highway and Her Majesty’s Prisons Dodds, and Government had been saddled with excess costs on all of them.He said the argument should not be about contracts, but about delivery, and the Opposition seemingly had no problems with that.“If a contract is going to cost the National Housing Corporation to end up owing people $70 [million] and $80 million I do not want to see a contract,” he said. (WG)