After Guyanese taxpayers are heavily gouged

Nov 29, 2025 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – There are indications that change is in the air. The unknown is how much of the change is real, has the credibility about it. The second unknown is how much change Guyanese can expect, with the many, many areas in government that have long been left to languish and need serious attention and correction.

The Public Procurement Commission (PPC) came out of its long hibernation recently, has developed belated insight, and gives the impression of taking matters in hand. What it didn’t see, or didn’t wish to see, before, the PPC is now highlighting in its 2024-25 Annual Report. Minutes of tender boards are consistently not published, hidden from the public.

Billions of taxpayer dollars are involved, but Regional, Ministerial, Departmental, and Agency Tender Boards drag their feet in producing the minutes of tender board meetings for public scrutiny. According to the PPC’s 2024-25 annual report, that was the glaring situation almost across the board, and which the watchdog group has now flagged as a chronic issue that must be addressed. A notable exception to the concealing of tender board documents is the National Procurement and Tender Board Administration (NPTAB). If the main tender agency in Guyana can provide its minutes for public consumption, then that should be the standard followed by the smaller tender boards. The PPC is saying that it is not so, and that there is a significant level of noncooperation to its efforts to get those tender minutes from tender boards at the regional, ministerial, departmental, and agency levels. The PPC reported that this is not the first time that it is running into brick walls in its efforts to obtain tender documents and do its oversight work. Now after heavy financial damage has been inflicted, the PPC is bustling with newfound seriousness.

There are several questions that we at this paper think deserve some straight answers. What messages are these regional, ministerial, departmental, and agency tender boards sending by putting up a wall against submitting tender documents, when requested by the PPC? One is that there are things to hide, and on any occasion that that is so, it is usually not for reasons that meet any honesty or ethical tests. The fact that so much taxpayer money is at stake, why was not the same hue and cry being made today by the PPC not given the widest national exposure before, since it is not a new concern?

President Irfaan Ali has always insisted that his government gives very high priority to transparency and accountability, so how could these suspicious sets of circumstances be allowed to fester so long? If only a handful of the tender boards identified, there could be some appreciation that the PPC was exercising restraint in the hope that those tender boards that were at fault would resolve the situation, given the time and discretion allowed. The truth is the opposite: the PPC’s 2024-25 annual report stated that requests for tender minutes/documents resulted in “marginal acquiescence” and “limited adherence.”

Whether “marginal acquiescence” or “limited adherence”, the only interpretation of what has been happening is that just a few tender boards were responsive to the PPC’s efforts to gather minutes and/or documents related to the work of such boards. What do the people that were part of tender boards think they were doing, operating a family business, and in a carefree manner as well? And why was the PPC so subdued before putting this before the public? Its own oversight work was being handicapped, yet the PPC was content to do little more than shuffle papers, and utter polite sounds out of public earshot. What game was the PPC playing in the recent years of its existence? A fire had to be lit under the PPC before it decided to take a look at what happened with the controversial and high-profile $865M Belle View Pump Station project award. There was something that huge, and that pinpointed well-connected government people, but the PPC was more or less sleepwalking, and protesting that its powers were limited.

Now, the PPC has stirred itself into life in this energetic post elections period. What is this all about, the genuine article, or more hoaxes?

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Editorial, gouged, Public Procurement Commission, taxpayers

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