Region Six Chairman wants probe of alleged contract-splitting

Aug 09, 2018 News

A section of the Number 19 Road that was cleared by the workers

After reports surfaced of the awarding of contracts to clear the road shoulders along the Corentyne, the matter was raised once more at the local Regional Democratic Council’s Statutory Meeting recently.
It was stated that the monies spent to contract the individuals to carry out the clearing exercise should have been utilized to purchase machinery through the NDC’s. This, in turn, could have been used to do the very job the persons who were awarded the projects are doing.
Zamal Hussain, regional councilor for the PPP said, “They are in serious violations pertaining to the regulations in the National Procurement and Tender Administration Act.”
He said that any contract in excess of $14M should not be given by the Regional Tender Board or the ministerial tender board. Additionally, a contract in excess of $10M should be tendered publicly, “so that we can have the particular contract given a fair chance and that people can be able to tender and we can get the best price,” Hussain said.
The councillor disclosed that at the Regional Tender Board an allocation was made for $90 M in dietary and janitorial supplies in Region Six but “the Regional Tender Board could not have split the contract and award it to particular suppliers”. It was given to the National Procurement and Tender Administrative Board.
“What happen on the Corentyne Highway is that a contract was split into sections and we have not seen the public tendering for this particular project,” Hussain argued.
Meanwhile, calls were made by the Vice Chairman, Dennis Deroop, to have the current CORE workers who also execute community cleaning works on the Corentyne to be sent to the East Bank of Berbice. It was revealed that their supervisor is an AFC member that was also awarded one of the road shoulder cleaning contracts.
Deroop said that the CORE workers presently utilize grass cutters that are used to slash the road sides. “This is blatant corruption, how are we to believe that he is not using the CORE brush cutters and the CORE workers to execute his contract. There was a recommendation if the project should continue the workers should be reassigned to East Bank Berbice where they are needed there to clear the road shoulders, so we don’t have interference,
If they don’t want to employ people from the East Bank of Berbice, they should have the workers in the system to be moved to the East Bank of Berbice”.
The CORE workers are currently being paid $60,000 per person to execute works. They were noticed to only be working in the Fyrish and Albion areas regularly.
The Prime Minister representative of Region Six, Gobin Harbhajan, had made calls to have the cleaning of road shoulders contract to be recalled after information surfaced that the contracts were not publicly tendered.
Approximately $120M in contracts were “served on a platter” to six contractors in Berbice who are close affiliates of some AFC members.

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