CULTURE OF CORRUPTION, CORRUPTION OF CULTURE

One of the key objectives of the Janus Cultural Policy Initiative is advocacy for greater scrutiny in cultural policy expenditure. The reason behind this is simple – funding lost to corruption and mismanagement is funding that could have been spent in viable cultural initiatives benefiting the country and its heritage as a whole. In this series, JCPI has partnered with Guyana Mosquito to release a series of in-depth investigation and analysis in various aspects of cultural policy expenditure under the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport.

Twilight At the Museum

How Corruption and Mismanagement is Destroying A National Institution

Part One – Digitization Double Dealing

In September of 2014, the Minister of Culture, Dr. Frank Anthony, launched the Modernization and Digitization project at the Guyana National Museum. According to the Ministry of Culture’s website:

“Visitors to the Guyana National Museum will now be able to view the museum’s collections via three 21 inch and one 84 inch interactive touch screens located on the ground and top floors of the institution. The Digitization Project is a database of the National Museum’s collections and artifacts on display with a website looking design. It provides expanded history on the National Museum’s artifacts and collections.”

The Minister pronounced it a success as did the Museum’s administrator, Nadia Madho. The idea for the digitization project came out of the Ministry’s strategic plan and was first announced in early 2013 by former administrator, Elford Liverpool. In November of that year, the project was awarded to local company Digital Technology, which not only provided the screens and installed the system, but which was also responsible for training museum staff in operating the system.

Illegal Tender?

Digital Technology has had a fruitful relationship with government, receiving almost half a billion dollars from documented government projects in recent years. In 2011, for example, the company rose to national attention when it was awarded a total of almost $300 million dollars in contracts to the Ministry of Education.

As Kaieteur News of July 28, 2011 revealed:
“Digital Technology was found to be in default of the Companies Act in 2010, the same year it also received Government contracts. The Education Minister last Thursday said that he was in possession of the 38 contracts since 2002, but when asked yesterday why he wasn’t prepared to disclose them, he said this newspaper could get that information by writing a letter to the National Procurement and Tender Board.”

Another report in Kaieteur News highlighted that the UPS systems that Digital Technology had previously supplied to the University of Guyana at a cost of $10M were defective and had to be replaced. Despite this background, last year the company was awarded three out of the six lots in a Minister of Finance tender for which it had bid a total of $60M, with the other three lots being split between two other competitors.

Against these numbers, the $8 million the company was awarded for the digitalization project seems small, yet even for this contract, the company does not escape the cloud of impropriety.

We searched the government’s procurement website as well as the media for any tendering for the museum project – there was none. Further investigation revealed that there were apparently no competing bids, despite the fact that the project contract surpassed the maximum threshold allowable for single sourcing under the National Procurement Guidelines. According to those guidelines, projects entailing the provision of goods and services above $200,000 must be put to competitive bidding.

If those projects are under $1M, the department procuring those goods/services have the option of restricted tendering; or if the project were below the $800,000 threshold the option of quotation tendering, which involves inviting three competing bids. Not only was none of this done, but even if it were, at $8 million dollars the digitization projection was far above the threshold.

The Museum does not have a board, with decisions being made by the administrator who reports directly to the Director of Culture, Dr. James Rose, in consultation with the Minister of Culture. Projects approved are then signed off and facilitated by the Permanent Secretary, Alfred King. The digitization project would have been subject to this approval, even without going to open tender.

Questionable practices, questionable costs

The impropriety did not stop there however – almost every line item in the contract under which the company executed the project showed some discrepancy, as did claims made in support of the company’s fulfillment of its obligations to the museum. For example, the Ministry’s report on the launch event noted that training was made available to staff to operate the programme. According to sources however, beyond a basic session to upload pictures, no further training was given.

Guyana Mosquito received a copy of the contract, which contains some questionable figures for the procurement of the equipment used in the project, beginning with the touchscreen monitors. All four monitors originally installed were LG screens.

According to the contract, the larger 72-inch monitor costs $2,079,300, or USD $10,400. While we did not find the prices for any LG monitors for that exact size, we found a regular LG 65-inch monitor for $1,600 USD. We also sought the pricing for a commercial touchscreen kit, one that could be overlaid to convert a regular 72-inch flat-screen monitor into a touchscreen system – at the expensive end was one from PQ Labs costing USD $1,400. Even if we were to double the price of the 65-inch monitor and add on the price of the conversion kit, it would come up to USD $4,800 in total, less than half the price that Digital Technology was paid for the larger display. Why the touchscreen conversion kit is worth mentioning is that when Guyana Mosquito visited the museum, all four of the touchscreen displays carried the brand name, PQ Labs.

Sourcing comparative pricing for the smaller touchscreen displays was much easier. A 23-inch LG touchscreen monitor could be procured on Amazon.com for about USD $560 – the price paid in the contract for one 21-inch touchscreen was five times that amount, $522,300 or USD $2,600.

Originally, smaller LG monitors were set up on brackets and mounts which accounted for $145,000 in the contract. However, the decision was subsequently taken to house the smaller monitors in wood podium and the larger one in a wooden casing. While on our initial visit the LG logos were clearly visible, no such logo is visible from the podiums. We have received unverified information that the original LG monitors were removed from the museum and replaced with cheaper Acer brand models.