Millions coming in, millions going out

Apr 28, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Millions upon millions of taxpayers’ dollars are shuffled around like monopoly money. The millions are spent as if the equivalent of play money, with visions of the thrills they generate. The Den Amstel Police Station reconstruction is one example of the fun that is being had with the oil money and borrowed money funding the budget.

In essence, Guyanese taxpayers incur four slaps on their heads. The first are the schemes behind the national budget allocation mechanism for capital projects and overall infrastructure. The second is through the practices that have cast a shadow over the contract award system. The third is how oil money that is taken out makes things possible for friends and family, and the network of agents to provide covers for the inexplicable. And, the fourth slap is the probable misuse of loans, like oil money withdrawn, on which interest must be paid and, in the case of the latter, earnings are lost, and the comfort of a cushion for distressed times gone.

A contract for $82M was approved in 2022 to reconstruct the Den Amstel Police Station in Region Three. Now two years later, the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board has just disclosed that bids have been submitted for $94M for additional work to fully complete the project. The initial reaction was that there must be an error in the amount identified, a typo in either the documents submitted, or somebody’s tongue got tangled up in the announcement itself.

It is unbelievable that a police station building/contract award that started out at $82M now needs $94M more to finish. For emphasis, it is not $9.2M but $94M. It is not 10-15% more, but the grand figure of 115% more that is being considered to make this Den Amstel police building seaworthy and public ready. According to the supporting information, the extra $94M is for infrastructural works. In Guyana, most things that have to do with infrastructural work have become a contract bonanza for the winners that is almost as huge as the offshore oil patrimony.

If $94M more for work still to be done sounds like a one-off replication of that other long taxpayer hemorrhage, the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, there is something that can be said about that belief. Cheddi Jagan must be feeling the fires of hell for what is being done with his name mentioned. To go from $82M for reconstruction to $94M more to complete fully can be compared to building a house for a certain amount, only for the fence and drains and concreting the yard cost over a 100% more. This raises several questions.

Whoever made the plan for the Den Amstel station rebuild, how could an aspect of the project that is so obvious and so big, as in such a heavy hit on the taxpayers, elude consideration? Was it a case of the required skill and attention to detail not being possessed? How is it that no one who was overseeing the first $82M contract failed to catch the infrastructure deficit? For $94M more to be the figure now being bandied about, does this mean that there was no infrastructure before, and that the old police station may have existed in some cattle yard? Even if such was the reality, how come it is so much, as in $94M? Is it part of the Guyanese bidding culture, where millions must be built into what is submitted, so that the people who need to be remembered and taken care of are accommodated?

In the general program of numerous public projects, and the hundreds of billions allocated in recent years, $94M more is a trivial amount. It is one that many would skip over, not be too concerned over. There are bigger and sexier projects with amounts to match to generate some excitement in the local environment. The concern is that these small amounts add up into what becomes more of a crisis than a problem. With hundreds of contracts to be awarded, it only takes a tiny percentage of them giving off that familiar odor, and taxpayers are cheated in the billions. Whether police station or pump station, the insiders and influencers are having a wonderful time.

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allocation, Den Amstel Police Station, Editorial, millions, reconstruction

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