Six government ministries and departments have been identified as having the most delays in capital works.

The Ministries of Education, Health and Infrastructure have been named along with the police, the judiciary and the Fiji military.

Minister for National Planning Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum says in most instances, pre-planning such as design and land acquisition is done late and this invariably leads to actual work starting late.

“What happens is that the tenders may be called in the 3rd quarter of the year or last week for example, I had files on my desk where everybody’s asking for waivers of tenders – or saying we need to waive tenders because this is a very important piece of construction that needs to take place.

The allocation was made in the beginning of the year, nothing was done and suddenly by November it’s become urgent. If it was, it should have been planned for in the previous year.”

All government ministries are part of a workshop on capital projects mentioned in the 2016 budget, with an intention of seeing that all works are started within the year.