Simple decisions attract controversy

Jul 03, 2011 Features / Columnists, My Column

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By Adam Harris

It is amazing how Government projects attract so much conflict these days. There was the Marriott project. That project saw the award of a multi-million-dollar contract for the re-siting of sewer lines in the vicinity of the Pegasus.
The contractor, Courtney Benn, made the investment, imported the new sewer lines and set about the task only to have the contract withdrawn. The reason was that Guyana did not have the skills, having lost most of them about twenty years ago. It is strange that this was not a consideration when the initial contract was awarded.
Money was spent and in the end that contract cost more than it should. The nation was told that the constructors of the Marriott hotel would fit the bill – that the cost of the sewage rerouting would not be borne by the taxpayers.
It turned out that the project is still to get off the ground and a contractor or investor is still to be identified. But someone had to foot that initial bill, and since there has been no investor or anyone ready to build the hotel ,and since money was already spent, it takes no high school diploma to determine that the money came from the national coffers.
Then there was the construction of the four-lane highway from Ruimveldt. That project had its own controversy. First, there was a problem with adequate labour. The contractor also had to contend with the weather and with the availability of material. In the end that project went over budget.
There was the Amaila Falls road project ,but in between there were other projects that set tongues wagging. There were the agricultural projects in Essequibo, the drainage projects that were not done to specification. People talked and the government responded that people were quick to criticize without having the facts.
But it was the Amaila Falls road project that attracted the most strident of criticisms to date. In the first instance, the contractor was said to be among the most inexperienced when it came to road building. He did say that he had built roads in Florida but search as the media might, there was no supporting evidence.
Then there was the question of backing finance. Investigation revealed that the contractor had owed taxes to the tune of US$24,000. It then became interesting to see how this person would acquire the necessary equipment, mobilize the needed skills and get the work completed.
The noise around the project has subsided, because the reporters appear to be tired of highlighting shortcoming after shortcoming. For its part, the government is saying nothing much, except to concede that the contractor is lagging behind schedule.
The project engineer, Walter Willis, has been reporting that the contractor needs to subcontract and that he also needs to pay careful attention to the equipment on the ground.
Now there is the laptop project. This too has attracted more than its fair share of controversy. One would have believed that to acquire laptops was no big task. These instruments are a dime a dozen and are so popular that the desktop computers are becoming obsolete. In fact, laptops are also heading in that direction with the appearance of the Ipad.
When laptops first emerged they cost a jewel and a crown. They were the items of choice because they were portable. Before long they had hard drives larger than the desktop computer, so more people gravitated toward them. Today they are ubiquitous and even cheaper.
It is the price, and the knowledge that they are obsolescent, that is sparking the controversy. The government proposes to give away 90,000 of them to people in its quest to make Guyana a country right up there in the area of ICT. In fact, these days, schools are more and more turning to the computer because they can actually eradicate the need for the bulky textbooks that many parents can ill-afford.
The problem began when the government took some time to respond to requests for the specifications. There is no laptop today that has a hard drive smaller than 160 gigabytes. By any standard that is a lot of storage space. But children are not into storing too much material, so one would have not expected too much in these computers.
The government eventually released the specifications, with emphasis on ports and a relatively large hard drive. There were three bids which again attracted controversy. One is still brewing because the supposed supplier has denied any arrangement with the potential importer.
There are so many laptop manufacturers that acquiring them should not have been a difficult task. These instruments can now be had for about US$100, depending on the size of the hard drive, and I am convinced that school children do not care much for more than a few gigabytes.
However, the announced price that the government was prepared to pay was close to US$300. This is not really a problem because one can rest assured that the government is keen to give people the best if it is going to give them anything at all.
But why cancel all the tenders? Or why go to tender at all? In my book, the government could easily get a department to contact laptop manufacturers and have them imported. But I suppose that the need for transparency has influenced the decision to go to public tender.
However, two things have happened. One is that a potential importer has run afoul of a manufacturer and the latter has stopped short of suggesting some forgery.
But most controversial of all is the government’s decision to cancel the tender and to re-open another. Some feel that having spoken with other potential importers, the government has modified the specifications.
The bottom line is that too many things that should be simple decisions attract controversy, not that there will not be more of the same.

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