I have been proven right about corruption in Region 6

Oct 27, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
I have been accused by some of deliberately spreading false allegations in my letters to the media but the Auditor’s General Report has vindicated me to some extent and I am sure that a forensic audit into the Region 6 Tender Board and the corrupt manner in which the 2017 Capital Expenditure was done will allow the finances allocated to our region to be meaningfully spent and do not end up in the pockets of corrupt poAliticians and government officials.
On 24thOctober I read about the findings of the Auditor’s General Report for 2015 which was recently presented in the National Assembly which states among other things that 79 contracts totalling $147.586 million was not awarded to the lowest or the most competitive bidders and it also stated the reason why the lowest bidder was not awarded the contract was ‘inadvertently not included in the Regional Tender Board minutes’. I made these observations since July 4th when I made it clear at the RDC Statutory meeting that, Section 39(6) (a) of the Procurement Act makes it pellucid that ‘all evaluation criteria for the procurement of goods, works and services in addition to price, will be qualified in monetary terms and the tender will be awarded to the lowest evaluated bid’. I further gave circumstances where this subsection has been blatantly violated, attesting to cronyism and corruption and I gave clear examples where this was done on 7th July, 2106.
In addition to the above, the Procurement Act provides that contractors who were not successful should be notified by the Regional Tender Board as to the reasons why their bids were not successful. This was never done and this constitutes a clear violation of the Procurement Act. This question was raised at the RDC meeting on 4th July but no reason (s) was given by the Chairman of the Tender Board or any of the Tender Board members who were present. Nothing was ever written in the minutes of the Tender Board.
If Region 6 is to get value for money then it is imperative that an inquiry be held as to how the Region 6 Capital Expenditure Budgetary proposal was done. Many of the Capital Expenditure projects are grossly inflated to facilitate whoever gets the contract to be able to give a handsome ‘kickback’ to the various players involved. As I have said before unless Capital Items in the Proposal are carefully scrutinised and evaluated then we will always be robbed of our scarce resources in Region 6.
Furthermore, Councillors in Region 6 are not even aware of where these projects are and have no idea of the extent of the work budgeted for, so it is the work of the Government to put systems in place to ensure that these inflated works are flagged and adjusted so that we can afford to get more capital works done. From my conservative estimation of the capital expenditure proposal, the figures have been inflated by at least 10% which will amount to approximately $110 million. Many of the capital projects identified will hardly warrant an expenditure of more than 50%. However, an audit in this regard will be quite revealing.
Let the Government get an independent team to evaluate these projects. It is time to stamp out corruption in Region 6.
Haseef Yusuf

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