Contracts and corruption

May 07, 2015 Editorial, Features / Columnists

The right of a government to award contracts has never been questioned. As a matter of fact, contracts are integral to national development. But there are means of awarding contracts. The law states which contracts should go to the Central Tender Board, which would be awarded by the Regional Administration and which by the Neighbourhood Democratic Council.
In recent times where the authorities might favour a particular contractor there was what is known as contract splitting, something that prevents the contract from being awarded by the Central Tender Board. This practice was also adopted by the other bodies in the local democratic organs but there were complaints.
Needless to say, no one was ever punished for the blatant disregard of the established law but the taxpayers often suffered. They were presented with substandard work despite some of the contracts containing penalty clauses. Poorly constructed roads, substandard bridges and even faulty kokers were the result of the selected tenders.
The Parliamentary opposition could only complain. When it remained in the minority it could only hope that the media would highlight the irregularities. Soon, the contractors, safe in the knowledge that the most they had to worry about was the media shame, continued their merry way. Some contractors openly boasted that they had friends in the government and therefore had no need to worry about sanctions.
But the government has actually taken steps to recover monies from shoddy contractors, especially on the major projects such as the Amaila Falls Road Project. The government moved to terminate the contract of the original contractor, Makeshwar ‘Fip’ Motilall with alacrity and actually moved to the courts to collect outstanding monies. Other contractors were also taken to court, most recently, the Indian contractor, Surendra Engineering.
The truth is that the government will recover none of the money largely because it will not actively pursue the legal action. Such is the state of affairs with contracts that people on the outside have concluded that the award of contracts is seen as a family business. People closely associated with the government, in recent times, have won most of the contracts.
It is this that has now led to widespread accusations of nepotism and charges of corruption against the government which remains unfazed, so unfazed that it recently awarded a contract that now has the entire country wondering whether the government was ever keen to combat corruption in its midst.
What is even more shocking is the fact that there were actually attempts to defend the contract. And in defence, the government moved to abuse all those who dared to question the award. Even in the face of the stated facts the government’s chief spokesman held that there was nothing untoward about the award.
He said that the contractor was undertaking the rehabilitation of the fibre optic cable form Brazil for free. A simple analysis revealed that the rehabilitation is rather costly. The government may not have to resort to the public treasury for every aspect, but the tax and duty free concessions over 40 years would represent a significant outflow of funds from the treasury.
The aware of sections of the cable to the contractor for use as he sees fit is also going to provide him with substantial revenue, no different from the money being earned by the telecommunication giants in the country.
What is surprising is that this contract was not put to public tender. The Cabinet Secretary said that the government chose not to look the gift horse in the mouth when the ‘free’ offer came up. Surely a government should not be playing so loose with the taxpayers’ money.
It now turns out that the cost of maintaining the cable will far outweigh the cost of bringing the cable to Guyana from Brazil. Why would the government award such a contract? The view is that it is in the habit of rewarding party supporters and members, something that even other party members condemn and have publicly criticized.
And to think that the government is heading into elections with this record, and this most recent award that stinks to high heavens.

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