On September 24th, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo made the eye-opening claim that 95 percent of public projects under this administration have been completed successfully. The figure was contained in a Department of Public Information (DPI) release on his meeting with permanent secretaries, regional officials, the Joint Services and government agencies at which he issued a warning about consequences for procurement violations.
It is unclear from where Mr Jagdeo derived this figure of 95%. There is no contractor general’s office overseeing publicly funded projects. Further, the sprawling and burgeoning public sector spend encompasses a number of ministries, pertains to an extensive variety and diverse scales of projects, flows through various tiers of government and extends across all regions of the country. It would be nigh impossible to correlate all these disparate undertakings. The Vice President’s figure is likely just an overly optimistic guesstimate. If nothing else, his declaration underlines the need for an overarching body to keep an eye on this extraordinary spending of oil revenues. Each contestant at the upcoming general elections should explain in detail how these projects will be kept track of in a manner that would hopefully integrate seamlessly with the regional and local government tiers of governance.
In April this year, following public complaints about poor work on many government projects, Attorney General Anil Nandlall SC announced that he had acted upon the instructions of President Irfaan Ali and issued edicts to ministries on the establishment of units to assess where projects are experiencing unjustifiable delays or there was evidence of poor work.
The Attorney General said in part: “You are hereby advised to immediately make functional within your respective Ministries and Project Units, a unit to specifically and dedicatedly evaluate the execution of all contracts being undertaken in your respective sectors, in order to assess the performance of the contractors in the discharge of their contractual duties and obligations.
“Once unjustifiable delays, substandard works and other such fundamental breaches of contracts are observed, then clauses of the contracts dealing with notification of the contractor of the alleged breaches, and remedial provisions dealing with sanctions such as liquidated damages, forfeiture of securities and termination etc., should be immediately invoked and activated.
“As part of this initiative and to support the work of these proposed units, a Contract Compliance Unit has been established at the Attorney General’s Chambers and Ministry of Legal Affairs. The functions of this Unit will be to provide the relevant legal advice and appropriate guidance and actions when requested, including, the filing of legal proceedings when necessary, just and expedient so to do”.
There has been no further word on this initiative and how it is functioning. However, daily there are troubling signs at public projects which not only betray poor work but also cause dislocation to citizens with the likelihood of cost overruns.
One that Messrs Jagdeo and Nandlall would perhaps pass by often is the new World Bank-funded Liliendaal pump station under the Agriculture Sector Development Unit’s Sustainable Agricultural Development Project. Its original completion date was April this year. It is hopelessly behind schedule and major earth works are underway alongside the Rupert Craig Highway. A pipeline has to be run under the highway and already a depression on the northern carriageway is beginning to develop. At what point in this project will there be accountability for the delay in completion, application of liquidated damages and possible gross dislocation to commuters?
On the same day that Mr Jagdeo spoke, Minister of Housing and Water, Collin Croal paid a visit to the La Bonne Intention (LBI) housing development. At the end of the visit, DPI announced that a $130m well was being drilled at LBI but that Mr Croal had noted that the initial contract awarded to Morris Jeffrey for $85 million had been terminated due to non-performance. So how did the cost of the well move from $85m to $130m? Were any monies paid to the first contractor recovered? Were liquidated damages assessed? What is the loss in terms of time, money and convenience to the housing scheme? Who will account for it and to whom? Will the public have to wait four years for the Public Accounts Committee to get around to this project?
Were it not for the contractor trying to put himself in the clear, the public would not have known that the $1.4b Port Kaituma stelling developed problems because of a poor design. Again, what is the extra cost to the national coffers and is the errant party to be fined and examined very closely in respect of future projects?
Then there is the clanger – the Belle Vue pump station contract that was awarded to Tepui Inc. The fate of this project will tell the public that the government will turn a blind eye to corruption and has no intention of cracking down on jobs for the boys and the incapable. Despite the fact that MP David Patterson complained to the Public Procurement Commission in October 2023 and the award was found to be in breach of the evaluation guidelines, neither the government nor the PPC has acted. Prompted by this newspaper, the PPC disclosed that there had been no cooperation by the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) in providing a progress report on the project which would have then informed a possible termination of the contract. This newspaper has tried on numerous occasions to elicit an answer from the NDIA on its failure to update the PPC on the pump. No update has been forthcoming.
By their delinquency both the Ministry of Agriculture/NDIA and the PPC are failing the nation, its taxpayers and good governance. The National Procurement and Tender Administration Board could not have reasonably awarded this country to Tepui. So, the heated warnings aside, Mr Jagdeo and his government have a serious problem of probity on their hands which colours the entire procurement sector. What are they going to do about it?
These are only a few of the major projects that exhibit signs of corruption, unaccountability and poor work. The Schoonord to Crane Project and the Cemetery Road and Conversation Tree debacles are among others. Whether the percentage of such projects is five, 10 or fifteen it must be addressed and lead to clear steps to protect public monies and ensure no recurrence.
At his press conference of September 24, Mr Jagdeo himself pointed to a series of problems in public sector projects including the deliberate slowing down of project implementation by some agencies, which leads to a year-end rush which is then used to justify sole sourcing of contracts.
He also touched on the potential for the manipulation of the three-quote system, warning that it must be used sparingly and within a controlled environment to preserve the integrity of the bids.
Concern was also expressed by him about the increasing use of restricted tendering by some ministries, often without valid justification. He further condemned instances where bribes are solicited to expedite payments for completed work.
The Vice President also referred to cases where several members from one family may have companies registered with them, and they all bid for contracts. Aside from the talking, what is the government doing to crack down on these practices and how entrenched are they? Even if it was only 5% that remains completely unacceptable.
