No criminality in Sussex St. bond deal

Sep 11, 2016 News

Systems in place to prevent recurrence – Granger

President David Granger

After 15 months, there have been several incidents that would have caused, to some extent, damage to the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) administration’s image.
The most recent being the controversial Sussex Street, Albouystown bond deal between the Ministry of Public Health and Businessman Lawrence “Larry” Singh –Principal of Linden Holdings Incorporated.
Due to this controversy, there have been calls for Cabinet Officials to be disciplined or even removed from office.
During the Ministry of Presidency’s weekly production of “The Public Interest”, Head of State, David Granger, was asked on how he plans to address issues in the form of decisive action pertaining to the performance of his Ministers in an aim to fix the APNU+AFC brand.
“Whenever something happens, we feel that it is damaging to the government, and we have an investigation and we ask Minsters to explain or to give reasons for their conduct. These matters are deliberated at Cabinet level and we see (an) inquiry…we see an investigation as means to improve performance.” The Head of State said.
The President admitted that during the past 15 months there have been errors, however those errors have not been that of criminality. He said that every Government makes errors and the implementation of systems to ensure that there is no recurrence, is characteristic of good governance.
“So yes, we accept that they’ve been errors, but those errors have not been that of criminality. There have been administrative errors and they have been corrected and every government makes errors, and we just want to make sure that we make fewer errors…Some of them are human errors, and some are administrative errors and some have resulted from the situation we inherited last May.”
The controversial deal inked between the Government and Singh had made headlines throughout the country. In August, Public Health Minister Dr. George Norton sought to defend the deal in the National Assembly, however he was unable to give a plausible explanation to the Parliamentary Opposition – the People’s Progressive Party/Civic.

Public Health Minister, Dr. George Norton

Minister of Public Health, Dr. George Norton

Norton had claimed that the agreement was in the interest of cost effectiveness. He had explained that the company was selected to store drugs and other pharmaceuticals for the Ministry of Public Health and the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation instead of New GPC, which is owned by Dr. Ranjisinghi (Bobby) Ramroop, because the latter’s rental fees per month was $19.2M while the other entity, Linden Holding Inc. would cost the government $12.5M.
But New GPC, in a subsequent statement, debunked Norton’s claims. The company said it had been storing pharmaceuticals at its warehouse without charges to the Government for more than a decade.
It was also pointed out that there was no need for the added storage space since Government has an equipped storage bond facility at Diamond, East Bank Demerara.
The Public Health Minister has since issued a public apology for “misleading the nation”.
Subsequently, amidst mounting criticism, the Government finally caved and in a statement, announced that Cabinet engaged in full and thorough discussions on the issue where it came to the conclusion that the arrangement was undoubtedly undesirable and the search is on for a new facility.
Government also stated that it is committed to transparency and accountability. The announcement and assurances by government came days after a private citizen threatened to take legal action to nullify the transaction.