The Audit Office of Guyana is currently awaiting the submission of additional information from the Ministry of Public Infrastructure (MPI) to complete the audit of the spending associated with the controversial D’Urban Park project.
This is according to Auditor General Deodat Sharma who said on Thursday that a reminder will be sent to the ministry.
“We give them a draft and they said…we didn’t ask them for certain things. So we give them an opportunity now to provide it before we go to the final report,” he said. Sharma said that some time has passed and the information has not been provided. The draft report was submitted to the ministry in December.
Sharma said that if he doesn’t get the information requested despite the reminder, he will have to issue the final report.
A special investigation, launched in early 2018, found that 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 preliminary findings, which were included in the 2017 Auditor General’s report, stated that up to December 31st, 2017, amounts totaling almost $1.150 billion were spent on the project.
According to the breakdown, in 2015, $36,509,000 was sourced from the Lotto Fund, while in 2016, $60,394,000 came from Infrastructural Development and $118,124,000 from Maintenance of Roads, both under the MPI. Further, that same year, sums of $150 million and $256,758,000 were sourced from the Contingency Fund. In 2017, $500 million was sourced from Infrastructural Develop-ment and $28,215,000 from Maintenance of other Infrastructure. The overall total of these amounts is $1,149,997,000. The 2017 report did not expand on the money taken directly from the ministry.
The report stated too that while the sum of $500 million was paid to Homestretch Development Inc (HDI) in 2017 by the MPI to enable it to meet its obligations to its creditors, there was no documentation attached to the Payment Vouchers to indicate the works done.
MPI, in December, was given a draft report with a request for a response within 30 days. This did not happen owing to budget preparations. The report, with the ministry’s comments, was hand delivered to the Audit Office on January 29, 2019.
The ministry has said it had no responsibility for the project prior to April 9, 2016, and claimed that 84 vouchers it had submitted as part of the investigation in January and February 2017, are yet to be returned.
In a letter to this newspaper in response to an article, the ministry stressed that the draft report was submitted more than two years after its documents were collected for perusal. The ministry claimed too that it was never meaningfully engaged to offer explanations.
In November 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 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 the MPI.
Over $1 billion had been spent on the project – a large parade ground with wooden stands – and despite this, the National Assembly had been asked to approve millions in extra-budgetary spending to meet additional costs.
