That $300 million waste disposal project: Incompetence or dishonesty?

Apr 19, 2012 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
I have been following the Kaieteur News’ disclosures on the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC)’s waste disposal project. We discover, thanks to the Kaieteur News, that a project which we paid 300 million for, now looks like one which should cost half this amount. It’s disgraceful and wasteful.
Here on the one hand we have Nadir telling us that our old age pensioners will receive three pensions, without having regard to the sizes of these pensions; 3-$2000 pensions cannot be better than one $10,000 pension, Nadir, so quit the shenanigans and deception and give the people a more realistic pension.
But we probably can’t give them more, since occurrences like this one at the GPHC are going on dozens of times every single day in this country, i.e. incompetence and in many cases, theft.
It was incompetence or dishonesty which allowed the Health Sector Development Unit to initiate a project without doing due diligence, as was their responsibility to the citizens of this country, to determine how much it would cost.
Also, the World Bank does not just give money for these projects. They are supposed to look into them and make sure that they are feasible and that the price being asked for is reasonable. If they are not, then they are not doing the jobs for which we are paying them a lot, since a significant amount of these loans go to paying the World Bank for investigating and processing the loans. They therefore have an obligation not to waste the money of the Guyanese people by financing this clearly inflated loan. Also, the following is extracted from the mission statement of the World Bank at website:
http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/anticorrupt/corruptn/cor04.htm
4. Controlling Corruption in Bank-financed Projects
“The Bank has a responsibility under its Articles to ensure that the funds it lends to borrowers are used for their intended purposes and with due attention to economy and efficiency. The Bank is also interested in the development effectiveness of its projects and sees loans as a vehicle for the transmission of best practice in project management to borrower governments. Central to the management of Bank-assisted projects are the Bank’s procurement and loan disbursement procedures”
This World Bank charter tells us clearly that they will protect us from these shenanigans. But in this case they clearly have not.
To develop this matter of dishonesty and incompetence that is so prevalent in this country, I would like to address something which I saw in the actual 2012 budget estimates Volume 1 on page 14 at section 31: Ministry of Public Works: we see that the total capital budget allocation for the Ministry of Public Works is G$17.706 billion. The allocation to administer this huge amount of money to pay for numerous construction projects countrywide, is only G$89 million.
In 2011, when the ministry’s capital allocation was G$13.152 billion, the staffing cost was G$90.3 million. i.e. they are projecting to spend less to manage the expenditure of G$17.706 billion than the previous year’s G$13.152 billion.
Today, as distinct from the past, all of the ministry’s work is contracted out, so there is need for even more experienced and knowledgeable staff to ensure that the people’s money is being well spent. This means qualified and knowledgeable engineers and managers of all kinds; civil, quantity, construction etc., are needed to administer the spending of G$17.706 billion in capital works. How can such a small and weak engineering/managerial staff which only costs $89 million a year ensure that the Guyana taxpayers are getting value for their money? The fact is that they are not. We know that there is one super engineer at the ministry, but given the shoddy and failed works we have seen, he is just not enough.
I now list the staff which this ministry requires to design, quantify and supervise G$17.706 billion by contractors: – 7 administrative staff; 2 senior Technical; 14 other technical and craft skilled; 18 clerical, 14 semi-skilled operatives and unskilled and 27 Contracted employees. Well first of all we seem to have 7 administrative staff to administrate 82 people, i.e. roughly one administrator for every 11 persons! The “other charges” to help these 82 staff members perform their duties is more than G$1.4 billion!
Also, we have no idea what these contracted employees do, some could very well be engineers, but since we do not know I am forced to disregard them. But looking at the established staff, those who are skilled and who have responsibility for making up the estimates of each of these numerous projects and supervising the process of monitoring them through all of their stages to completion, we have 7 administrative staff and 16 technical and craft skilled employees, a total of 23 staff members to physically supervise the G$17.7 billion for Capital projects all across this country. This is patently ridiculous!
This is why we have such poor quality work in our projects. The contractors do practically what they want to do, without a care for the people of this country and their taxes. No one is watching them properly and it must stop. And they will have to start here at the Ministry of Works. They must employ a consultant immediately to tell them how much staff they need to properly monitor how our money is spent, and to evaluate what sort of administrator is required to look after 10-11 people.
Now we come to another matter of even greater importance, we are told that the estimate which is nearly double what was required for doing this project was approved by the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board – a wholly illegal body, since the constitution requires a Procurement Commission which would be made up by persons from across the political spectrum to make sure that this sort of tomfoolery does not occur. Surely these people cannot be so naive as not to understand that this is an unacceptable response to the people of Guyana, as exposed by the Kaieteur News and those responsible should either be removed from all government positions for their incompetence or charged for being a party to these irregularities.
Tony Vieira

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