One of the biggest challenges for government’s Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP) continues to be human resources-based as many persons are refusing jobs because of the low level of wages and salaries offered and Minister of Finance Winston Jordan says a long-term plan is needed to address the situation.
“Although there has been measurable improvements of PSIP, we continue to have challenges. Some of these challenges are not going to work themselves out overnight at all. One such challenge is human resource; perhaps the biggest challenge at the public sector level,” Jordan told Sunday Stabroek during an interview last week.
To illustrate the situation, Jordan pointed out that the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board has borne the brunt of criticism for contract signing delays but noted that the problem is multifaceted. “You would hear, for example, people blame the tender board. Most of the problems come from evaluations. The bulk of the people who do the evaluation comes from existing people in the public service- the Permanent Secretaries, the Deputy Permanent Secretaries and so forth. They have their work cut out. So that is extra time they are putting into those evaluations. That means the evaluation times are late. So, it is three evaluators and sometimes you have to go looking for one or two of the evaluators because if they don’t sign the report, we can’t go forward. We can’t go forward,” he said. “We have put out ads for evaluators to come from the wider society because we recognise the problem of inbreeding, in terms of evaluation and this small pool of evaluators. So we have gone out two times for retired teachers, evaluators and these things. The response has not been great and partly because what we were going to pay wasn’t great also,” he added.
And while he would not go into detail, the Finance Minister was confident that much needed external assistance would be had in this area and hinted that the issue was being discussed with the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).
“Two weeks ago, I was at CDB. I told them we need to look at how we can get this portfolio moving. Particularly the CDB portfolio and can widen to the rest. We have come up with certain solutions; solutions that I don’t want to say right now. But as soon as we sign the MoU, we could sign and it could become official, and I can speak to them, then I would want to use those to migrate it to the other areas that we have, basically to speed up the implementation,” he noted.
President David Granger, according to Jordan, has taken a special interest in the programme and a monthly meeting is held. “We have at the highest level, every month, reporting to the President on the PSIP with all the PS’ (Permanent Secretaries) and the ministers,” he said.
Jordan added that from updates provided at the most recent meeting, he believes that progress, albeit gradual, is being made.
President Granger has repeatedly said that the meetings with Permanent Secretaries and their respective ministers provide a platform to examine what currently obtains in the government ministries and noted that the PSIP meetings help the government to plan efficiently and prudently for the next budget year.
On May 30th, following one such meeting, the Ministry of the Presidency said government was working to improve its performance this year in the implementation of the PSIP.
“Today’s meeting was very important from the standpoint that the Public Sector Investment Programme itself is very important in our national economy. In fact, in Guyana’s case it takes up a sizable part of our Gross Domestic Product. There are a number of issues still in the process, not least of which are quality staff, understanding procurement and its rules and procedures and we also have the issue on the private sector level where persons are taking on much more than they can do. So, all of these are adding to the challenges that we continue to observe in the PSIP. Today’s meeting heard those challenges again and we offered some solutions in some areas. Some of them are more medium term,” Jordan was quoted by the Ministry of the Presidency as saying.
He added that among the measures put in place by government is the amendment and passage of the Procurement [Amendment] Bill Number 2 of 2019. The legislation seeks to ensure that in the process of procurement, definitions are defined; there is a wider range of procurement methods listed; expansion of the way tender invitations are published; availability of budgets; mandatory registration of bidders; splitting of procurement; due diligence; description of the subject matter of procurement; inclusion of evaluation criteria; cancellation of procurement; forms of communications; debriefing; contract management; code of conduct; language of prequalification documents; debarment and suspension of suppliers and “green procurement” among others.
“I laid some amendments to the legislation couple weeks ago that will look at bidding, procurement planning, debarment and so all of that are part of the process. We are looking at the Department of Public Service and giving credence to the creation of some technical posts to make certain that this process is driven,” he said.
He noted that the government felt that it had done well in 2018 and hoped to build on that performance for 2019 and disclosed that would be another meeting in about a month’s time to review the progress made.
Jordan last week echoed much of what he said then to this newspaper, while adding that believes that there needs to be a greater proactivity among our senior staff to get the work done, while simultaneously focusing on the outer regions.
He bemoaned the uncooperative stance towards the programme by the opposition and said that in local government areas that are controlled by the PPP/C, there is a resistance and “denial of services to citizens” in the name of party.
“We also need to concentrate on the outer regions because we have to contend with opposition-controlled regions and there is where you will find citizens are denied services. Sometimes, the money just comes back,” he lamented.
But he said that government is forging ahead with the project implementation because it has seen the fruit and knows the potential it has for bettering the system.
In particular, Jordan praised the NPTAB, saying that it has worked to make the system for the award of contracts better. “The NPTAB should be given kudos because they hold seminars, they hold workshops, they work with the contractors’ association to show them the critical areas where they are missing out…they work with everyone,” he said.
