GOOD WORK, KAIETEUR NEWS!

Jul 18, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The Kaieteur News must be congratulated for the fine investigative work it has so far done in relation to a sluice on West Coast Demerara. I urge this newspaper to continue in this vein to bring to the attention of the Guyanese people, matters of public interest and in so doing to be faithful to the newspaper’s mandate of being a watchdog for the people.
We are already witnessing the fruits, some will say fallout of this reporting. The Ministry of Agriculture is now reporting the establishment of a citizenry monitoring mechanism, whereby projects being executed by the Drainage and Irrigation Board would be published in the newspaper.
This hopefully would allow the public to monitor what is going on with these works. Sounds good! Sure does! And it is not the first time that within the PPP administration something like this has been promised.
Many years ago, the government promised that it would allow for public monitoring by making known the various specifications of projects so that the respective communities could monitor what is taking place.
This promise was never kept.
In another instance, the main opposition party complained that while the Head of the Presidential Secretariat, on weekly basis, reports to the media on the various projects approved, should I say in the context of the Procurement Act, tenders not objected to by Cabinet, there is no mention of to whom these tenders are awarded.
This column had suggested a simple adjustment to the announcement. It had suggested that apart from indicating the sums involved, there should be mention of the name of the contractor. This unfortunately has not been done.
Nevertheless, I have faith in the Minister of Agriculture. I believe that the Minister of Agriculture is a man of his word and if he says that he will publish the details of the projects, that he will to honour this commitment.
I would however urge him to forget the idea. It is a waste of time. The public is not ideally suited to the task of monitoring of projects. They may be in a position to report on certain developments.
They may notice certain defects that are detectable to the eye of any ordinary citizen, but they lack the technical expertise to pronounce definitively on whether the overall specifications have been met and more importantly, whether the government is being shortchanged.
This must be the work of consultants. And what is therefore required is for those consultants who are required to sign off on a project upon its completion, to certify that it has been built to specification and that the government has gotten value for money to issue a public certificate to this effect which should then be published in the newspaper.
Too many consultants in this country are not being held accountable for their work. They have no public reporting responsibility.
If the PPP is serious about obtaining value for money, it will ensure that those consultants who are selected to monitor projects, put their signature to a public certificate indicating that works have been done to the satisfaction of the terms of the contracts and are technically sound.
In this way, these consultants would be holding themselves accountable to the populace.
Not that the populace should not be involved in projects. Before any project is launched within a community two things should happen.
First, the community should be consulted so that they can provide suggestions. Very often this is where the local knowledge will become invaluable and allow for projects to be tailored to the needs of the people and thus avoid while elephants being constructed.
The second thing that should happen is that there should be an assessment of the human resources that are available within the community to contribute to the project and this information can be subsequently used in the invitations for bids.
There are far too many projects taking place in which labour which is available within communities is bypassed since the contractors are not under any obligation to employ persons from within the catchment.
In terms of the monitoring of the project, though this should be left to the consultants.
However, if the government wishes to improve on this, it may move towards appointing technical persons, on a voluntary basis who should inspect and carry out tests on projects to ensure that they meet the technical specifications as laid out in the contract documents. This is not a task for lay people.
The media, as we have seen from the excellent work done by the Kaieteur News, also has a critical role to play.
I urge the media to continue to play that investigative role and to report on its findings for as we have seen in the case of the koker at De Willem, it has stirred the authorities to take action.

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