MORE EYES ARE NEEDED

Mar 01, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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In eradicating corruption in public office, priority should be given to controlling two dimensions of government: the size of government and large-scale public projects.
Experience has shown that corruption is often rife where there is a bloated public bureaucracy. Experience also forewarns about the need to pay great attention to large-scale projects, since this is where there is the greatest risk of massive corruption.
When you live in a small country with a small society, it is unwieldy for government to effectively manage a large bureaucracy. Limiting the size of the public bureaucracy is one means of limiting corruption, because the larger the government, the greater the inability to fully control all operations, and thus the greater the risk of corruption.
No matter how many auditors are placed in the bureaucracy, there will always be transactions that are not above board; transactions that will escape their eyes. Reducing the size of the public bureaucracy can be an important aid in limiting corruption. Limiting the size of government is, however, different from limiting the scope government.
It is hard today to limit the scope of government’s intervention in the public sphere. Modern governments provide a more extensive range of services and functions than they ever did before. But the fact that the scope of government is expanding does not mean that the size of government should become unwieldy.
And this risk of a large public bureaucracy is something that needs to be guarded against. In Guyana, one can understand the need for a Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment. This is an important sector of the economy that is now driving economic growth and this sector therefore needs the direct attention of a ministry. But the idea of a Ministry of Defence is a luxury which really cannot be afforded at this time.
Policies and plans are needed to help scale down the size of government without rolling back the scope of government. This can be achieved through a number of measures, including increased computerisation.
A new breed of public service workers are also needed, persons who come to the job with their own tools, including their own computers and stationery, and who do not require the same security of tenure that had characterized the traditional civil service.
A great many services, including legal drafting and representation, should be outsourced, and many services meant only to support a bloated bureaucracy can be dispensed with.
The public service needs to be reengineered to the demands of modern government. Unfortunately the early public service reforms have not been built upon. The Hoyte administration had rationalised the public service, but had not modernised it or reduced its size. That task has also been neglected by the PPP/C, under whose watch the bureaucracy has increased tremendously. What is needed is a new round of reforms to reengineer the public service.
Accompanying the increase in the size of the public bureaucracy has been massive infrastructural projects that are being undertaken. This is where there is the highest risk of massive fraud.
The Caribbean does not have developed institutions capable of constraining corruption in these large projects. Even in developed countries, there is corruption in large projects, much less in our part of the world, which does not have the sort of regulatory control and strong institutions promoting transparency and accountability.
In Guyana, there are a number of large-scale projects which need more than an extra eye on them. These projects need greater scrutiny not because there is evidence of wrongdoing, but because of the high risk of such conduct. There is the Hope Canal, the airport project and the Marriot Hotel Project to name a few that can become conduits for pilfering from the public purse.
Mechanisms must be created to ensure that every cent that is devoted to these projects is well spent, and not misspent or unlawfully pilfered.
The government tends to feel that the opposition parties are against these projects.
They are not opposed to development. They simply do not want to see monies wasted; they fear some projects are Ponzi schemes and they are suspicious that some major projects may be used to enrich certain cronies of the government.
The opposition would be hard pressed however to oppose these projects if mechanisms can be put in place to ensure that every cent spent is accounted for. This function should be performed by personnel independent of the government. International assistance should be sought so that there can be greater confidence in these projects and so as reduce the risk of skullduggery in their execution.

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