NOT DOING DUE DILIGENCE

Aug 22, 2016 Editorial

It is an understatement to say that the government has become a victim of one of Murphy’s laws “If anything can go wrong, it will” made popular by Edward J. Murphy Jr. Its extreme version:If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the first to go wrong. This was the situation when the government increased the salaries of some ministers by 50 percent who were only three months in office.
In office for over a year, the government seems incapable of getting its act together on many issues including its hiring process, the dissemination of information to the public, and making decisions and sticking with them. It has appointed several friends to key positions, including some in the diplomatic corps without doing due diligence.
The people are analyzing every statement and are looking at every move made by the government, especially since it has backed away from most of its promises made during the elections.
And it gets worse, almost every week, several ministers are seen tripping over one another by making inconsistent statements on the same issue. These contradictions have confused the people who do not know who to believe. But the government would be making a mistake if it thinks it could pull wool over the eyes of the people.
Questions continue to swirl over the sole sourcing of many contracts to friends, especially the awarding of a contract to store government drugs to Linden Holdings which does not have any experience in the storing of pharmaceutical products. Due diligence by the government would have revealed that the owner of the company is no stranger to controversy.
The government continues to be embarrassed almost daily by scandals because of its failure, laziness, or gross incompetence to do due diligence with those whom it employs or has awarded contracts.
This is true for the senior management at City Hall which granted a lucrative contract to National Parking Systems (NPS) without doing due diligence. It was revealed by this newspaper that NPS does not exist at the Manhattan address given by the company. Also, the Deputy Mayor has pointed out that NPS had hardly existed and that it has no experience in installing parking meters anywhere.
As if that was not scandalous enough, questions continue over the granting of fuel licenses to the head of the Guyana Water Inc. (GWI) who has close relations with the government.
The revelations of the licenses raised concerns because it was granted to the CEO after the government came to office.The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and his staff of the state-owned entity have also failed to do due diligence when its CEO hired his close friend and business partner last year as manager in the all-sensitive Debt Recovery Unit. That unit handles tens of millions of dollars each year that it collects from delinquent customers.
If the CEO or the staff at GWI had conducted proper background checks of the Manager, Lear Goring, they would have found that he was convicted by a federal judge in the United States and was deported twice to Guyana after serving part of his sentence on both occasions.
According to US court files, Goring was convicted of drug trafficking in the 1990s and served time in prison before being deported in 1993 to Guyana. Goring used a forged passport to return to the US in 1995, again with drugs.
And again he was caught and sentenced in a New York federal court to 63 months and was deported to Guyana for the second time after serving part of his sentence. It seems that scandals due to the lack of due diligence would continue to embarrass the government.