Unilateral administrative action
Another red flag is unilateral political action over civil servant professionals. Two public episodes illustrate the situation. In 2011, it was first revealed in a Jamaican newspaper that the Guyana Government, through the then Ministry of Works, had signed a sizeable contract with a Chinese contractor for the expansion of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport. This contract was approved directly by the Cabinet, without being managed and recommended through the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB), according to law. In 2016, under a separate administration, and following a complaint against the administration, it was revealed that a multi-million dollar contract for the feasibility study of the new Demerara River Bridge, by a Dutch consultancy, was similarly awarded through the now Ministry of Public Infrastructure, instead of being processed through NPTAB.
Hence twice in five years, the Cabinet under different administrations has selected (foreign) contractors, ignoring NPTAB. Such action obviously violates the regulations and poses governance questions beyond this narrative. It also usurps the role of the professional and disregards best practice procedures for any type of construction owner. The direct award may be prompted by the fact that foreign contractors are involved, but, if so, due diligence and evaluation of competence are even more important before contracting with a foreign entity.
Alternatives
The absence of local professional standards as indicated by the expert reports is obviously deleterious. The campaign for accountability nationally should clearly be extended to an intra-ministry level, and professionals in the sector should be held responsible for their performance.
The law in Guyana is silent on a person using the title engineer or architect, or quantity surveyor for that matter; and hence the construction owner has little assurance that a person holding themselves out as such is in fact competent. In this regard, there may be an alternative of two broad options: 1 – Stipulate membership in a professional institution as mandatory for certain technical employees and consultants, say, department heads or consultant leaders. Some existing international institutions promote up-to-date standards, with a strong ethics component, enforceable through a complaints procedure complete with disciplinary hearings, if necessary. Or 2 – Introduce legislation in Guyana, perhaps harmonised with CARICOM, to define professional titles, set standards and provide for enforcement.
As regards unilateral action by Ministers and Cabinet, dominance over internal professionals, (and hired external consultants) plus indifference to competence of subalterns provide opportunity for any administration to by-pass or overrule professional involvement. The political administration should take action consistent with the Ministry of Public Infrastructure’s stated objectives (in its mission statement) of integrity, efficiency and teamwork.
Government as regulator
As regards the government’s regulatory role, and in relation to safe buildings, on the World Bank Group’s ‘Doing Business Report 2019’, Guyana scored 4 on a scale of zero to 15, on a building quality control index. Guyana’s score is the lowest for Latin America and the Caribbean. Scores for neighbours Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname were 10 and 6.5, respectively. Scoring was calibrated against construction of a standardised warehouse by a hypothetical construction company, which included amongst its directors a licensed architect and engineer. Hence the premise of the calibration was already pitched above what pertains in Guyana where no such licensing is in place. What is noticeable in the reports for Guyana is that enforcement of construction permits by inspection during and at the end of construction are not always done; scores for Guyana were zero under these heads. (However scores were obtained for the existence of legal requirements and their accessibility). Unsurprisingly, scores for the certification by licensed professionals responsible for verifying that plans comply with existing building regulations in the first place, and for subsequent enforcement were zero (on a scale zero to four), thus reflecting the concerns of our architect and engineer expert reports of last week.
In 2007, Charles Kenny, a senior economist with the World Bank, carried out analyses on construction firms in his work ‘Construction, Corruption, and Developing Countries’. Though writing on the wider issue of corruption, he was of the view that effective regulation enforcement did not necessarily require independence from government ministries concerned. Rather, Kenny was of the view that transparency of enforcement decisions is the key. On this basis, the concern of conflict, that is whether civil servants are acting as advisors or employees, can probably be withdrawn, but the following should be noted in regard to transparency, or lack thereof:
● Where site visits are not made (from latest Doing Business Report) for town planning or building control purposes, it raises the question as to the basis on which permits are granted or refused.
● This leaves much room for unexplained delay and for manipulation, whereby applicants may need to pay an ‘expediting fee’ for normal processes to be completed; this could be constituted as bribery, an act expressly outlawed in some countries from which potential investors come, and with severe sanctions.
Opaqueness
A case in point is the recent cease order against Nalco Champion Guyana, as covered in the media. In 2014, Nalco was granted permission to reconfigure property at Industrial Site, Georgetown, to be used as a container terminal. In April 2018, the business applied to Georgetown City Council for permission to erect a warehouse to store oilfield chemicals, amongst other activities. Where a permit for change of use from the Central Housing and Planning Authority is evidently only a pre-condition for continued town planning assessment and for separate building control evaluation by the City Council (with later site visits to ensure compliance with said evaluation), it ought to be clear that application for warehouse erection should only be entertained where there is already in place a permit for change of use. Yet the warehouse was erected and completed, unmistakeably without planning assessment, building control evaluation, or enforcement visits. In July 2019, the City Council issues a cease order against construction as “unauthorised work”, but only after complaints from residents in the neighbourhood, who should have been consulted in the first place. The City Council also launches an investigation, consulting with other agencies as to any permission for construction, and according to the Town Clerk (ag) is “currently enquiring whether a permit was given to the company to change the use of the land from agricultural uses to industrial use.” This, even though the site is already designated an industrial estate, and in fact was last in “agricultural use” in the 1960s.
In terms of the construction market, the Nalco case with the eventual cease order is an example of ‘imperfect knowledge’ (through opaqueness) of grounds and procedure for regulator decisions, as well as dominance: that of government as regulator over the private owner. In this case, the costs incurred likely include the (private) abortive cost of the warehouse, or at least those elements which cannot be converted to alternative use.
In summary: As regards ownership, the clear alternative is for government to embrace the competence of construction professionals and to set the tone by an open policy that espouses only selecting winners through standard procedures. In regard to regulation, again competence of control professionals is important, as well as transparency in decision making, failing which Guyana runs the risk of being left behind by the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The next Part will examine weaknesses on the ‘supply side’.
