Dear Editor,
In a letter which appeared in SN of Nov 5, Mr. Omadatt Chandan, Corporate Secretary of the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) has once again skewed the subject matter raised in my letter by listing works and services at various locations in Guyana which in his opinion have been successfully undertaken by NDIA/ASSP (Agricultural Support Services Programme) but vaguely relevant to the topic which was the controversial Hope Canal now under construction. He was also under the false premise that works undertaken by NDIA/ASSP are a saving to taxpayers who in the first instance have to pay for the equipment, wages and all those other costs associated with a project. It is after all these costs have been compared with those of a private contractor that the financial advantage of a NDIA/ASSP executed project could be established and it is this lack of comparative financial transparency that the public has grave misgivings about. The approved ‘force account’ cost for constructing the 10 km Hope Canal by NDIA/ASSP is yet to be announced by Mr. Chandan.
The public is apprehensive about NDIA/ ASSP executed projects without adequate financial controls. There was no competitive bidding for excavation of the 10 km Hope Canal since the NDIA/ASSP chose to construct the work by ‘force account’ under the pretext that its fuzzy track record shows that it has successfully completed earthen works cheaper elsewhere than private contractors. If NDIA/ASSP was confident of its competency to undertake this type of work and serious about transparency it would have put this job out to competitive bidding with NDIA/ASSP as one of the bidders. In this way it would have been there for all to see and compare as well as confirm NDIA/ASSP’s claim that it is indeed a competitive force to reckon with when it comes to earthen works projects if it turns out it was indeed the lowest evaluated bidder.
The earthen works claimed to be successfully completed by NDIA/ASSP cannot be substantiated by facts and figures since no system has been set-up by NDIA/ASSP to assess the comparative cost for projects and to show how it has been saving taxpayers ‘bags of money’. It has invested heavily on excavators at a cost to taxpayers primarily to handle emergency situations and during the ‘slack’ it undertakes the kind of varied jobs Mr. Chandan listed in his letter and which he implied were freely executed and/or at a far cheaper cost to taxpayers but failed to comprehend they were paid for from budgetary allocations and/or loans in the first instance. With no proper accounting and ‘any cost goes’, NDIA/ASSP has kept the costs of projects it executes closely under cover and not open for public scrutiny.
If indeed as Mr. Chandan claims there is transparency at NDIA/ASSP, he could advise through this medium how the supervising consultants’ reports on construction of the Hope Canal could be accessed to monitor construction progress and the payments made for work done.
Finally, in a previous letter Mr. Chandan claimed that the Hope Canal when completed will provide flood relief for Abary and Mahaicony communities during periods of prolonged and heavy rainfall. If this claim is not one of his usual gaffes, he could no doubt enlighten us all how this objective will be achieved directly.
Yours faithfully,
Charles Sohan
