THE EDITOR, Madam:
THIS SMALL news item caught my eye in September 29, edition of The Gleaner.
Eleven-member team heading for North America, headed by Phyllis Mitchell, Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, and other senior officials from the Ministry of Education, also some community representatives.
They will visit Saskatoon, Canada and Washington D.C. The group will be away for 10 or 11 days. The purpose of this trip is to 'examine the management systems of some of their school districts'.
Well, being a curious individual, I decided to make a few telephone calls re airfares, hotel rates etc. The following will be quite an eye opener for a lot of our citizenry I am sure.
(All these figures are approximate...)
Hotel for 11 nights $60,500
Airline tickets $552,596
Food for 11 days $90,750
Taxis, tips, taxes $59,800
TOTAL $763,646
Would it not be more economical for the already heavily taxed Jamaican to send for the top person in Saskatoon and Washington's School Management System and pay all their expenses, to bring down all the information that we need? I am sure most of this is on the computer disc anyway.
A rough calculation reveals the following:
One person from Saskatoon all expenses paid
For 11 days staying at:
the Kingston Hilton Hotel $65,340
Food for 11 days @ $750 per day $8,250
Airfare to and from $40,500
Taxis, tips and taxes $5,000
TOTAL $119,090
One person from Washington all expenses paid.
For 11 days staying at the
Kingston Hilton Hotel $65,340
Food for 11 days @ $750.00 per day $8,250
Airfare to and from $15,400
Taxis, tips and taxes $5,000
TOTAL $93,990
So one can see that the 11 persons' trip costs $763,466.00. With the two persons' all-expenses-paid trip costing $213,080 there would be very substantial savings of over $550,000
When one considers we can get the same information from the two persons my question is, how often is this sort of situation occurring in the various government Ministries, as we are talking about huge sums of money. Millions of hard earned dollars.
I am, etc.,
TERENCE MORGAN
P.O. Box 108,
Tower Isle P.O.,
St. Mary,
E-mail: tewe@cwjam.com
