The team from the company contracted to produce E-ID cards for residents of this country is here and has declared that the data technology to be used will be a first globally, President Irfaan Ali last evening announced.
“Only today I met with the whole team from Veridos and they are here to work with us on this new ID card that is transformative. They told me that the technology that will be on our cards will be the first in the world,” Ali said last evening during remarks at European Day celebrations held at the Georgetown Club. “We are not playing around and playing second best. Guyana must get accustomed to playing at its best,” he added.
That the team to be awarded the US$34 million contract has already arrived in the country, signals that the government has not heeded calls to halt the project to allow for legislation pertaining to its use and other measures to be put in place.
The Alliance for Change and the Guyana Human Rights Association have called on the government to pause the proposed programme and to submit it to Parliament, as they pointed to lack of legislation to guide it and a dearth in public awareness.
In addition, former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran called for an overall cancellation citing legal breaches in the contract’s procurement.
On March 10, the government announc-ed the virtual signing of the deal with the Germany-headquartered Veridos with the UAE acting as an intermediary.
Ali had explained that the Government of Guyana sought the assistance of the UAE in October of 2021. “On an invitation of His Highness Sheik Amah al Maktoum, two internationally recognized industry leaders [a Swiss company] and Veridos presented their national ID system solutions. These solutions were evaluated by a technical team comprising members of the National Data Management Authority and the office of the National ICT Advisor. The evaluation criteria factored technology use, other government clients, as well as biometric security subsystems, and Veridos was the company in the estimation of the evaluators that presented the best solutions for Guyana,” the President had said.
Attorney General Anil Nandlall justified government sole-sourcing of the contract, contending that the sensitivity of the data it would contain required world-class security features from trusted companies and an “open market” opened the floodgates to data being compromised.
Nandlall went on to say that a time will come when issues regarding the card could be heard in the National Assembly. “We have complied with the Procurement Act in respect to those types of services. That is why we are saying the allegation is misplaced,” he said.
But Goolsarran rejected Nandlall’s arguments, about the contract in which the role of the UAE remains unclear, as he highlighted that it was in breach of this country’s laws.
He noted that his views on the contract for the production of electronic ID cards provoked quite a stir among government officials who insisted that there had been no breach of the Procurement Act. Referring to calls for the matter to be discussed in the National Assembly, Goolsarran observed that the Attorney General stated that he believed that when the issue of funding comes before the Assembly, the matter will be ventilated there.
“This implies that the source of funding for the contract had not been identified at the time it was signed on 10 March 2023, and no advance payment was made to the supplier, which is rather unusual. The Fiscal Management and Accountability (FMA) Act specifically prohibits the award of contracts for goods/services and the execution of works unless there is adequate provision in the approved estimates, or any annual budget proposal before the Assembly, for payments to be made in relation to such contracts,” Goolsarran asserted.
He said that Section 30(1) of the Act reads: “No contract or other arrangement providing for the payment of public moneys with respect to any programme for which there is an appropriation or an item included in the annual budget proposal then before the National Assembly to which that payment is to be charged, shall be entered into unless there is a sufficient unencumbered balance available in the appropriation or the proposed budget item, as the case may be, to make that payment.”
Goolsarran said that a review of the Estimates for 2023 indicated that there was no budgetary allocation for the procurement of electronic ID cards nor was there any mention of this in the Minister of Finance’s budget speech. Additionally, there was no annual budgetary proposal before the Assembly at the time the contract was signed to provide for payments to be made under the said contract. In the circumstances, Goolsarran declared that there has been a breach of Section 30(1) of the FMA Act and a lack of parliamentary approval to incur expenditure on the contract. Section 16 prohibits the incurrence of expenditure without an appropriation, except as provided for under Article 217 of the Constitution.
