Cabinet cannot investigate itself

Aug 13, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The person who owns that property in Sussex Street, which is being rented by the Ministry of Public Health to store medicines, is one lucky fellow. The man should go and buy a lottery ticket. He has landed the deal of a lifetime. It will not get any better in life. He has hit the jackpot and must be congratulated for negotiating such a lucrative arrangement.
Imagine that you bought a property for ten million dollars. Imagine that not long after you bought that property, you got a rental contract for the building for five million dollars per month. Imagine that within two months you can pay off for a house you bought. If everyone could obtain such a deal, think about how wonderful life can be.
Even if you have to spend a few million dollars to make the place suitable for the tenant, you would do it because within two months, you know that you are going to recover the purchase price of the property.
The Ministry of Public Health has reportedly entered into an agreement to rent a property, recently acquired for twenty-five million dollars. The rent is twelve and a half million dollars per month. Where in the world is a property rented for fifty per cent of its purchase price a mere few months after the purchase? Where? Is this the standard that the new government is setting?
This deal has raised eyebrows. It has caused eyeballs to almost pop out of their sockets. It has caused a few heads to be bowed. The matter would never have probably come to light had the deal not first been made public in the parliament.
The initial public outcry of the deal – including the coverage of the issue by three of Guyana’s dailies and the harsh criticisms by the opposition – was crushing. The matter naturally came up at Cabinet and a sub-committee was established to report within two days on the matter.
With such a narrow timeline, it would not be surprising if the report essentially rubber stamps the deal. The government could not have been serious about getting to the bottom of this issue when it gave a Cabinet sub-committee a mere two days to examine the issue. What could be examined in such a limited period? The time was too short.
The investigation was also ill-conceived. A Cabinet sub-committee is not suited to this task. Cabinet committees are usually established to ensure the implementation of decisions made by Cabinet. Cabinet sub-committees are usually policy-making bodies with some powers of implementation. There is no role for a Cabinet committee or a sub-committee to be an investigative body. This is a novelty.
Cabinet cannot investigate itself. The appointment of this sub-committee therefore, constitutes a slap in the face of the Guyanese people.
But worst of all were some of the findings of the hurried investigation. It was stated that an examination of the facility showed that the building met the standards of the World Health Organization. Now, is there a certificate of compliance from a certifying office which is attached to the World Health Organization? What is the basis of this conclusion that the building met WHO health standards? The local World Health Organization office must issue a statement as to its involvement, if any, in the certification of the facility.
The limited timeframe in which the Cabinet sub-committee had to complete its work would not have allowed it to look into what is the most important issue of this matter: the rental which the government is paying.
If there was an urgent need for storage, then why not enter into a deal for a few months, at a reasonable cost, and then put the matter up for tender? Why not ask the existing suppliers to the Ministry to store the products until it is required by the various health institutions? There were many options open to the Ministry of Public Health.
The deal, inclusive of the security deposit, is worth more than one hundred and fifty million dollars per year or six times the price at which the facility was bought earlier this year.
The high rental is the reason why there is open tendering. The way to ensure that the government gets the best deal is to have an open-tender. This was not done in this instance. There are people who feel they could have supplied the service for a fraction of the cost being charged. The only way this could be tested is by open-tendering.
This deal needs to be quashed. But then again, we may end up with another approach to parliament to pay the compensation for breach of contract.
The government, however, should avoid further criticisms over this affair. The matter has dirtied the image of the government and no 48-hour investigation is going to scrub that clean.
The matter needs to be fully investigated. The basis of the rental price needs to be explained.

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