Absence of procurement commission is breach of trust

 

Recently, the America Secretary for Health and Human Services wrote: “The
essence of good government is trust”.

The President of Guyana had exposed that the Surendra deal for the specialty
hospital was tainted by fraud, and the Attorney General promised that legal
proceedings are apace to recover almost one billion dollars that the impugned
company had collected in advance without turning a straw for the project.

In any other country where accountability is a feature of government, heads
would have been rolled, but not in Guyana.

That and other failed and corrupted projects should have sent a signal message
that Cabinet ought to keep its hands off the contract process, as this
continuing practice has open the door wide to politicians who use their offices
to lobby and to indulge in nepotism.

The answer has been and remains the establishment of the Public Procurement
Commission. It must be a high distrust of to feel that our public servants are
unfit to make procurement decisions.

The government has so far argued that the opposition is only interest in
wresting procurement decision from the Cabinet. But what the Cabinet is doing
is contrary to law, and the President is in violation of the Guyana Constitution.
The law is what it is, and places this responsibility over procurement outside
of Cabinet.

In calling for the Commission the AFC is not trying to sabotage governance, but
embellish it with acceptable features of check and balance, which is a basic
tenet of democracy and core expectation in all free nations.

But the self-insulating arrogance of this government is that it does not
trust  professionals, and deems them unfit to procure public
projects.  

Today, we maintain that the Public Procurement Commission should be established
without further delay. Until this is done, Guyana will continue to lose
valuable resources on bungled and failed deals, and our procurement process
will be tainted and paralyzed by political corruption and cronyism.

October 16, 2014


Source: Alliance For Change -Guyana <afcchange@gmail.com>