The recent disclosure that each government ministry will shortly be equipped with its own separate unit tasked with providing assessments of the various performances of contractors across the state sector comes in response to continuous concerns over instances of serious performance anomalies that have been both costly to taxpayers and inimical to ambitions associated with the timeliness of contract completion. Effective continuous assessment of the performance of contractors across the various sectors have usually led to concerns over what is widely believed to be collusion between contractors and state officials that impact negatively on the timely and satisfactory completion of contractors. These, not infrequently, lead to significant cost overruns.
While the decidedly belated response to these anomalies has been the recent disclosure that government ministries will each have their own separate bodies to oversee contract execution, some state functionaries as well as contractors familiar with the execution of state contracts are likely to wonder aloud as to whether the agreed upon oversight mechanism is likely to bring a greater measure of transparency and efficiency to the system. There is a school of thought which suggests that the numerous contract compliance anomalies relating to the execution of state contracts are, in many if not most instances, influenced by approaches to contract execution that have to do with embedded chicanery and fraud, the architecture of which is erected on collusion between state assigned Contractors and Public Service ‘watchdogs.’
Some of these schemes are thought to be backed by ingenious bending of the rules and the insertion into the process of ‘bent’ procedures designed to protect both the contractors and their cohorts in the state system from responsibility in circumstances where queries arise. One Public Service functionary told the Stabroek Business earlier this week that the crooked system flourishes specifically for the reason that they benefit from ‘guardian angels’ at various levels of the state sector food chain, including well-placed functionaries specifically assigned to ‘protect’ these anomalies from prying eyes and scrupulous probes. In essence, the senior state functionary told the Stabroek Business last week that the scams are usually effective because “there are the right people in the right places to protect the anomalies from prying eyes.”
The said state functionary also told this newspaper that the move to establish Units within Government Ministries “tasked with assessing the performance of contractors across the various sectors” is likely to be effective only in circumstances where they are ‘kitted out’ with the requisite levels of clout and integrity (which is usually in the gift of politicians) to protect them from being ‘torpedoed’ by functionaries with greater clout. “We live in a society in which political clout always supersedes the authority of the state,” the senior Public Service functionary told the Stabroek Business. “That is how it has always been.” This newspaper recalls one relatively recent instance in which there appeared to have been a certain level of blatant interference executed personally by a senior government official.
The official disclosure on the establishment of the various Contract Compliance Units and the supporting Compliance Unit within the Ministry of Legal Affairs is likely to prove effective only if the authority of these institutions does not become swiftly subsumed beneath the overburden of political prerogative that usually scatters considerations of transparency and integrity to the winds. The problem here is that if we allow ourselves to be guided by precedent, the announcement regarding efforts to protect the state tender system by creating inbuilt barriers buttressed by commitment to legal oversight is unlikely to ‘fly’ in a society where, all too often, it is political clout that gets the benefit of the last laugh.
