The flurry of claims and counterclaims about responsibility for the costly failures at projects such as the high-value Kato Secondary School and the Good Hope Bridge is enough to send the tax-paying public into apoplexy.
Casting aside the haze, the people of this country don’t want excuses, finger-pointing and blame-shifting. They want value for the money which was spent in their name and for those who are accountable for the failures to make recompense. That is the only basis on which the administrators of this country can proceed considering the extent of the public works budget and the financial stringencies facing the economy.
Both the Kato Secondary and the Good Hope bridge were high-profile projects of the former PPP/C administration and those of its officials who had superintendence of these projects should be as co-operative as possible in helping to establish where responsibility lies for failures.
Built at a cost of $728.1m after Kares Engineering had secured the contract with a $691.7m bid, the still-to-be-occupied Kato school is already exhibiting signs of cracked and crumbling concrete floors and walls, steel protruding from the walls, termite-infested wood and improperly installed equipment in the science lab and a sink which was simply positioned without being secured. Even more shocking is that the estimated cost of remedial works is at least $144m.
A vital component of the Good Hope canal project, the $350m Good Hope Bridge has seen an approach slab separating from the structure causing traffic problems and requiring costly remedial work even though it was only commissioned in 2014.
In the case of the Kato Secondary, it has been alleged that the then political directorate pressured the consultant and the contractor to complete the work before the 2015 general election. Even if this were the case it doesn’t absolve the consultant or contractor from delivering work to the highest standard. The claim of political pressure may however signal that the contracting system for public works is not adequately insulated from interference by politicians.
The serious problems with these two projects reflect the depth of the dysfunctions in the public procurement system that have prevailed for years. Under the PPP/C administration there were numerous example of badly designed, supervised and constructed projects. In recent years, the infamous Supenaam stelling was a prime example which also cost taxpayers large additional sums to rectify. Even now the facility doesn’t function as originally conceived. A number of projects were done poorly and the contractors allowed to escape without being made to rectify shortcomings in the defects liability period and without the application of liquidated damages. The mother of all disasters under the PPP/C was the Skeldon Sugar Factory whose mill cannot deliver anywhere near to its rated production capacity and has been a main contributor to the swingeing cost of production and the high annual losses at GuySuCo. Its contractor, CNTIC was able to escape scot-free without the application of penalties and a South African company had to be recruited for repair works at a substantial cost but still the factory continues to underperform and underwhelm.
This is the culture of mediocrity and permissiveness which has infused public works and emboldened stakeholders to deliver work of substandard quality. This is the culture of patronage that enables contractors who are donors to political parties and friends of the political directorate to escape liability for shoddy work. This must end now.
Is the APNU+AFC administration up to this task? It has talked the talk but delivering is another matter. There are troubling signs that the administration is not respectful of the need for accountability and openness in public works. There are troubling signs that it has cozied up to some contractors in a manner similar to its predecessor and this will, of course, make it nigh impossible for accountability and the delivery of a high standard of work. How else does one explain the incredibly abject work on the D’Urban Park pavilions which at the last moment had to be handed over to the Ministry of Public Infrastructure for rectification.
It was the APNU+AFC government which commissioned these works in some shadowy private/public arrangement and invited donations of material from the public that saw uncured wood being used and much rough work being produced. The inappropriate hiring of a contractor for the Specialty Hospital and the poor manner in which works were carried out recently on Carifesta Avenue are other cases in point.
It is now time to turn all of this around. With strides being made in terms of the Public Procurement Commission, the entire process must be subject to the most rigorous scrutiny and safeguards implemented beginning with the designer of the project right down to the contractor. First, the track record of all those interested in participating in public procurement must be carefully evaluated. Those who have encountered major problems in their projects should be marked down in the system while those who have outstanding performances should be marked up before other criteria like the value of the bid are considered. Designs for projects should accord with the highest standards and must then be peer reviewed to determine whether they are feasible. Designs that are unsound in engineering considerations or beyond the capacities of local contractors or the materials available would be futile.
The strictest criteria must be set for the work of the consultants who are the ones determining whether the project is being done to specification. Too often there is an unspoken arrangement where the consultants go easy on the contractors and in the end no one accepts blame or is blamed as in these recent extant cases. That syndrome of blamelessness must come to an end. The government must make whatever legislative changes are necessary to ensure full accountability all across the system.
In the meanwhile, since remedial work has to be done for both the Good Hope Bridge and the Kato Secondary, it behoves the government to have a person or firm with the requisite experience comb through the entire process from design to construction and sign off to determine where the projects went off the rails and who should be held financially liable for the failures and the additional sums that must be spent.
