Signing officers to be penalised for overpaying contractors

Mar 01, 2013 News

By Abena Rockcliffe

Signing officers attached to government agencies may now have to take responsibility for overpayments made to contractors as members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) threatens to have them surcharged when the overpaid balances are not recovered.
Both government and opposition representatives at the PAC meeting held yesterday, firmly rebuked the Region Six Regional Executive officer (REO) and his team about a number of matters arising out of the Auditor General report as pertinent to that region.
However, one issue that seemed to have been most disturbingly repetitive in the auditor’s report was constant overpayment made to contractors which most times haven’t been recovered.
It is customary for contractors to produce a certificate of completion upon executing the full contractual agreement in order for payments to be made. Whether the contract was awarded for supplies or construction, at the end, there must be document to show that the terms of contract have been fulfilled by the contractor.
After, the contractor/Supplier would have formulated the document, an official from the respective agency will have to inspect and sign off.
Situations have arisen where offers signed for works which may not have been of quality or similarly signed off on stocks that may have been undersupplied.
In situations like these, the auditors may find that that contractor or supplier may have been overpaid. In those cases the monies need to be recovered. Currently, the existing system is for the contractors to refund the money. However, contractors haven’t been working along too well when it comes to returning monies.
Over $10M was noted as needed to be recovered from contractors for works as far back as 2005.
It was pointed out yesterday that that problem was not unique to Region Six; however it was one that attracted much brainstorming on how to address it in future.
A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) committee representative Keith Scott’s position was that contractor’s refusal to refund monies under the circumstances at hand should be deemed a criminal act, but government committee member Bibi Shadick was adamant that contractors should not be criminalised for receiving money on the basis of a certificate.
Her argument was that it is the job of an engineer, or whichever other relevant agency official, to ensure that the job was completed to the required standards. She said that failure on those personnel to effectively execute his/her function should not result in the onus being left solely on the contactor to return the monies.
“If the contactor returns the money it is good and that should encourage more contractors for that company, but failure to return money should not result in criminalisation… I know it is taxpayers’ money, but we cannot force the contractors.”
Committee Chairman Carl Greenidge referred to the issue of contractors being overpaid as a legal nightmare since the contractor can’t necessarily be taken to court, but he urged that engineers “do what is right.”
However, Manzoor Nadir and Odinga Lumumba, government representatives, saw it differently.
Nadir opined that the contractors should be responsible for repayment because they knew that that the quality would not have been standard or they didn’t adequately supply.
But Lumumba took it to another level when he said that “we should jail them.”
The member’s opinion was that “it is a criminal act, he knows he is overpaid, these guys could put together a document in such a way that it would bypass the engineer… we’ve got to jail them. And when these things happen it goes that the government is thieving. We have to fire some and jail some to get to the core of problems or we will be dealing with the same thing at every meeting”.

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Signing officers to be penalised for overpaying contractors

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