A matter of investigation

Jul 19, 2011 Editorial

For far too long there have been criticisms of just about every contract the government awarded in recent times. And some of these have been large contracts that would see millions of dollars, if not billions, being given to some contractors to execute certain works.
Indeed, Guyana needs a lot of infrastructure works to be undertaken because over time hardly any was done because money went into debt repayments. Roads deteriorated and were left unrepaired; buildings were allowed to lapse into a state of disrepair because the view was that one day money would be found to do total repairs. The money was never found.
City Hall is a case in point. A monumental structure that is now one of Guyana’s heritage sites, it is on the verge of collapse. Sections of the roof are broken, walls are collapsing and parts of the flooring are so weak that people run the risk of falling through.
The government seems ready to let City Hall go the way of so many other national buildings because the municipality is controlled by people who are deemed to be politically opposed to the government. And the City Council does not have money— not even money to pay wages and salaries to its workers, so the building would continue to collapse until one day the plot of land on which it stands would become available to the highest bidder because the property is prime real estate.
However, to its credit, the government has been concentrating on facilities such as roads and bridges, schools, hospitals, telecommunication and sea defence. These are all multi-billion-dollar projects. But there is something wrong with all of them. They appear to be too high priced and above all, when the work is completed some other contractor invariably has to revisit the project to undertake modifications.
One case in point is the Amaila Falls hydroelectric project road. There was apprehension on the part of the public about the ability of the contractor, Makeshwar Fip Motilall, to undertake the project. Members of the public did extensive research and found that Mr Motilall did not qualify to undertake such a project. Indeed he could have hired the skills from overseas as he had promised.
Today that project is limping along to the extent that it may not even be completed under Mr Motilall’s watch. Already, the government has taken away aspects of the road project—to wit, the construction of the bridges.
There was more recently, the award of a contract for the supply of computers. This contract was large by Guyana standards—$223 million. But what about the supplier? Months earlier his company was being threatened with expulsion from the list of companies that could do business in Guyana. It had paid no taxes for the year before.
But for all this, the company was allowed to place bids for the One Laptop Per Family project. This is a gigantic project, all of $1.8 billion (US$9 million). For a company indebted to the state to still be allowed to bid and have that bid accepted speaks a lot for the due diligence conducted by the government. As fate would have it, the company did not qualify but the deed was done.
Whether it managed to put itself in order is not known. We have to take the word of the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education that there was due diligence. The same company qualified for two large Government contracts to supply computers.
Increasingly, it becomes clearer that we set no store by thorough checks in certain matters. For its part, the Guyana Defence Force has gone public with its recruiting policy. It is publishing the photographs of the recruits and inviting the public to report on the fitness of the person to become a member of the force.
The Ministry of Health had been doing the same thing, too. It has been publishing the names of people recruited to become trainee nurses. Again, the public is asked to scrutinize the people. These are examples of due diligence. It should be extended to every aspect of national life that warrants the expenditure of taxpayers’ money.
People are not averse to spending money or having their money spent. They are averse to throwing their money. They all want value for money, something that President Bharrat Jagdeo has been demanding when the occasion arises.

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A matter of investigation

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