IDB needs to be more forthcoming with information

Apr 19, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
I refer to Onika Smith-Narine letter in the Kaieteur News (Tues, April 12, 2016) captioned “Using the IDB for the PPP’s narrow ,political agenda”. The letter writer’s response to my letter is somewhat three weeks late and it does appear to be a dictated response. The writer also appears to be doing IDB’s bidding or the APNU/AFC bidding under a mysterious name(Alias) What would have been helpful is an official response from the IDB. However the letter opens more questions rather than providing a response and doing the IDB justice. How did Narine obtain such confidential information like contracts being issued or not issued to a specific person and knowing about the appointment of Shyam Nokta at the office of Climate Change (OCC) Narine also knows about the projects Nokta bid for at IDB and the projects he was implementing and other confidential information accessible only from the IDB.
Ms. Narine seeks to convey that the IDB did not employ the persons I mentioned about in my letter but the government and the IDB’s only role is to ensure transparency. It therefore seems that the employment of post-may 2015 staff at OCC and the facilitation of payments are above board with the exception of transparency. Ms. Narine you should know that IDB has to give no objection to all contracts and hence would have had to review the procurement process to give its no objection to the employment and payment of the staff in question at the OCC. Furthermore, all procurements are usually past of an approved procurement plan by the IDB.
So in essence what you are saying is that the IDB approved the contracts based on a flawed procurement process. Again this is worrying and opens the question, what more is IDB hiding and how many more suspicious transactions have been done contrary to transparent procurement practices? It is those at the IDB office who should visit their website and familiarize themselves with their own policies as they are the ones who are flexing themselves partially. Further, therefore was nothing secret about Mr. Nokta’s and Kapil Mohabir’s appointments at OCC. In addition Mr. Mohabir was not head of the OCC, but head of the project management office (PMO). In those days the OCC /PMO had in place a multi-stakeholders steering Committee (MSSC) which comprised a board representation including members of parliament from the then opposition .All information and projects were tabled at the monthly meetings of the MSSC.
Can you Ms. Narine find out when the last time the OCC convened the MSSC? Why secrecy of operations of the OCC with massive funding from the IDB and yet its silence on disclosed requirements in the interest of the public? The IDB seems to want to play politics rather than being objective, impartial and transparent .I am dumb-founded as to why two simple requests for information from the IDB cannot be answered in simple disclosure to the public rather than going around in a vicious circle .If they are willing to give information on Nokta then why can they not give information on the Post-May 2015 staff appointments at the OCC.
Finally, Ms. Narine in her letter commends the APNU/AFC government for its transparency which was alien to the PPP/C. Is Ms. Narine therefore saying as a defender of the IDB that the level of transparency of the IDB is simple to the APNU/AFC government which appointed 34 political advisers but is ashamed to disclose their names in the public domain? And that the PNC the main coalition partner when it was in government prior to 1992 never produced sector accounts and reports and when voted out form office the PPP/C inherited an empty treasury? But when the PPP/C departed governmental office, the APNU/AFC coalition inherited a healthy treasury. Ms. Narine has a flawed conceptualization of transparency and her response to my letter as a result was not relevant since my request for two bits of information from the IDB was not answered. Her response was therefore a miserable failure .Try again IDB.
James Cornelius

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IDB needs to be more forthcoming with information

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