Nowhere, has the risk of stagnation and political paralysis in local government been greater than in the area of financial probity. Over the period following the last local government elections in 1994 there have been numerous complaints, charges and allegations of malfeasance, misfeasance and the most blatant forms of corruption. In many cases these have not been properly investigated because favoured individuals were ensnared or there was a complete lack of ability to get forensically to the truth. In other cases, like in the Mayor and City Council, the competing centres of power have made it difficult to separate wheat from chaff and to swiftly discipline the culpable. Two senior officers were recently sacked only after a painstaking investigation that was conducted out of the council’s jurisdiction.

There is evidently a major problem across the board as manifested in what recently transpired in Region Four – where the seat of government is located – and where one would have expected much closer scrutiny to interdict financial shenanigans before they mushroomed into grand schemes like the one that the Regional Executive Officer (REO) Mr Shafdar Ali has been linked to.

The much heralded Integrated Financial Management Accounting System (IFMAS) which collates records of every transaction from all 10 administrative regions is, according to Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Kellawan Lall, periodically scrutinized. It was during this process that “red flags” were seen. It raises the question of the frequency of the scrutiny, its methodology and whether any specific software has been devised to tease out these red flags. Minister Lall provided the excuse that because there are thousands of transactions it is an extremely difficult task to keep track of the database. This is not an acceptable excuse. Maximum use must be made of tools like IFMAS and central government must ensure that it can efficiently sort and analyse the information being inputted.

Minister Lall then went on to say that in the $100m worth of dubious transactions it was discovered that only one person was supplying Region Four with goods and services in areas like maintenance and the acquisition of various items. In the words of Minister Lall, when the premises of the supplier were examined it was found that she did not “have a store. She’s not known to be a reputable supplier of the type of goods she had tendered for. She won all the contracts… she supplied things for the schools, hospitals; stoves, fans and so on. It seems as though she will be given money in advance to purchase these things because she doesn’t have them in stock…” For some of the items, the three-quote system was utilized but for most of the time the region’s tender board decided who was supplying what. It was this information that was submitted to the auditor general’s office which helped generate a preliminary report which recommended that REO Ali, expediter Mr Bharrat Persaud and the secretary of the tender board be disciplined. The police were also called in and Mr Lall said that from the records examined and interviews done there appeared to have been a complete breakdown of internal controls and collusion between the supplier and RDC officials.

Quotations, according to Lall, were attached to payment vouchers which did not bear any relation to the actual projects and there were several breaches in procurement procedures. Further, payments were made for supplies which were never received by the region. Prices were also inflated to use up funds that remained at the end of the year.

Minister Lall further said that “It is inconceivable that the REO did not notice that one supplier was supplying every item to the region when he signed over 100 requisitions” for purchases from this supplier.

This is a disastrous state of affairs that the Region Four council and the ministry must accept responsibility for. What Minister Lall should also have accepted is that it is inconceivable that this state of affairs should have been prolonged over any period without being swiftly detected. That lapse is easily attributable to the arrangements at the Regional Tender Board (RTB) and the many positions in council business that Mr Ali held. As reported in Stabroek News, Mr Ali held the posts of REO along with the positions of the Chief Accounting Officer, Chairman of the Tender Board and Clerk of the RDC.  His holding of all of these positions was a recipe for unaccountability and one that the local government ministry was fully aware of and apparently comfortable with. It would also not escape the scrutiny of political watchers that Mr Ali was someone that the government was very comfortable with and given the delicate balance of power in Region Four between the PNCR-1G and the PPP/C he was placed there to ensure that the wings of the PNCR1-G regional chairman were clipped when necessary.  Mr Ali was clearly accountable to the Ministry first and then everyone else after.  This was apparent when he took it upon himself to authorize $1.1m for a 2008 Christmas party and the council subsequently surcharged him for this. As a result of the political tug of war Mr Ali aggrandized more and more power to himself on the warrant of the government, so it must take a major portion of the blame particularly since the dealings of the Regional Tender Board are not open to scrutiny.

This situation points to the urgent need for the Local Government Commission which has been ‘in the works’ for many years. It is desperately needed to end the authority of the Ministry of Local Government over the appointment and disciplining of senior officers of local government bodies. However, there isn’t much optimism for this as the government has been able to engineer legislation which will stack the composition of the body heavily in its favour.

There must be an instant review of the procedures and practices of regional tender boards. One would have thought that the Procurement Commission would have had oversight of this process but it too is yet to be installed more than a decade after it was promised. The barest due diligence at the regional tender board would have readily detected what was going on at the RDC and this unqualified supplier would have been quickly unmasked. The fact that this didn’t occur says that the RTB was not functioning or turned a blind eye to what was going on. Either way, the current one should be dissolved and reconstituted.

The appropriate cues also have to be sent from central government to local government. The recent contretemps in Parliament over accountability for the $4b in supplementary funds sought for the Ministry of Housing betrayed the inclination on the government’s part to secrecy and sleight of hand. This is one in a long line of events including accountability for lotto funds and expenditure for the Great Flood of 2005 and the Cricket World Cup. When junior officers see their senior counterparts behaving in this manner some of them interpret this as a blank cheque to do as they please. The Region Four RTB is a grotesque case in point and must be immediately remedied.