More than two months after the Ministry of Public Infrastructure (MPI) was furnished with a copy of the draft final report of an audit investigation into the spending associated with the controversial D’Urban Park project, the Audit Office is still awaiting a response.
This is according to Auditor General Deodat Sharma, who explained to this newspaper last week that he had sent the document to the ministry’s Permanent Secretary (PS) last November. The PS, Sharma recalled, replied sometime in December and asked for a month-long extension.
Stabroek News reached out to MPI for an explanation but there was no response to this newspaper’s enquiries.
In November of 2015, then Governance Minister Raphael Trotman had announced that Cabinet had given the go ahead for contracts for the transformation of D’Urban Park into a “Green Zone Recreational Park,” in time for Guyana’s 50th anniversary celebrations the following year.
Larry London was subsequently revealed to be a part owner of Homestretch Development Inc (HDI), the company which started the project. It was later learnt that then Education Minister Dr Rupert Roopnaraine was also a director of HDI. President David Granger had defended his involvement with the company, saying that the minister’s role was only to represent the government’s interests.
From all indications, HDI, through donations both from local persons and those in the diaspora, commenced work at the site in September, 2015, about two months before government officially announced what was happening there. It was subsequently handed over to MPI.
Over $1 billion has been spent on the project – a large parade ground with wooden stands – and despite this, the National Assembly has been asked to approve millions in extra-budgetary spending to meet additional costs.
A special investigation was launched in early 2018 and the preliminary findings were included in the 2017 Auditor General’s report on the public accounts of Guyana, which was presented to the National Assembly late last year. At that point, the investigations were still ongoing.
In addition to tapping into the Contingency and Lotto funds, the MPI sourced money from its road works and infrastructure development budgets to complete the project.
The report stated that up to December 31st, 2017, amounts totaling almost $1.150 billion were spent on the project.
Providing a breakdown, the report states that in 2015, $36,509,000 was sourced from the Lotto Fund, while in 2016, $60,394,000 came from Infrastructural Development under MPI; $118,124,000 from Maintenance of Roads under MPI, and sums of $150 million and $256,758,000 from the Contingency Fund. In 2017, $500 million was sourced from Infrastructural Development and $28,215, 000 from Maintenance of other Infrastructure. The grand total of these amounts is $1,149,997,000.
The 2015 figure was referenced in that year’s Auditor General’s report, which noted that no approval was given for the use of that money. The 2017 report did not expand on the money taken directly from the ministry.
The report says payment vouchers to support expenditure totalling $107.119 million were not produced for audit examination. As a result, it stated that “the completeness, accuracy, and validity of this amount could not be determined.”
The report stated that the sum of $500 million was paid to HDI in 2017 by MPI to enable it to meet its obligation to its creditors. “However, there was no documentation attached to the Payment Vouchers to indicate the works done, supervisory checks carried out on the works, as well as certification that the works were satisfactorily completed,” it said, while reiterating that only the list of HDI’s creditors and government’s proposed payment allocation to each creditor was attached to the Payment Vouchers. “In the circumstances, the correctness, accuracy and validity of the payments made could not be determined,” the report said.
It added that in response to a request for documentation, the Permanent Secretary explained that the Ministry was “not involved in the operations of HDI; hence, it did not have any information detailing supervisory checks or their methodology of determining that works were satisfactorily completed.”
