Last week, Attorney General Anil Nandlall SC acted upon the instructions of President Irfaan Ali and issued an edict to ministries on the establishment of units to determine where public projects are experiencing unjustifiable delays or there is evidence of poor work.
A statement from the Attorney General said that the ministries are to make functional within their respective Ministries and Project Units, a unit to specifically evaluate the execution of all contracts being undertaken in order to assess the performance of the contractors in the discharge of their contractual duties and obligations.
“Once unjustifiable delays, substandard works and other such fundamental breaches of contracts are observed, then clauses of the contracts dealing with notification of the contractor of the alleged breaches, and remedial provisions dealing with sanctions such as liquidated damages, forfeiture of securities and termination etc., should be immediately invoked and activated”, the statement read.
As part of this initiative and to support the work of these proposed units, a Contract Compliance Unit has been convened at the Attorney General’s Chambers and Ministry of Legal Affairs. The Unit will provide the relevant legal advice and appropriate guidance and actions when requested, including, the filing of legal proceedings when necessary.
On April 3rd, President Ali stressed that having lapsed contracts or shoddy works will not be tolerated and he put contractors on notice.
“I have said publicly that the contracts must be managed tightly and contractors who are not keeping in accordance with their timelines, liquidated damages must be charged and that the contract files must be updated to ensure that once they go past the 10 per cent of liquidated damages then termination must take place,” he stated.
“Secondly, to financial institutions, we have to levy on the bonds when the contracts are terminated. Those mobilisation advance bonds we have to levy on those. Of course, [we are] working through some key issues to ensure that we are on time and that any hurdles are mitigated,” he added.
Considering the billions apportioned in this year’s budget for roads, drainage, sea defences, bridges etc, one can certainly see the need for a policing of these projects to ensure timely delivery, sterling work and value for money. Except that this government has not heeded clear warning signs and much money has likely been frittered away on the contracts that have already been cancelled, varied or poorly done.
One of the major reasons for shoddy work – and no project evaluation unit will make a difference – is the absence of an Engineer’s Act to ensure that those who offer themselves up to undertake these assignments are fit for purpose. Clearing drains does not qualify you to build culverts and neither can a pavement maker erect a pump station. Yet for all of the 27 years that the PPP/C has been in office going all the way back to 1992 it has steadfastly refused to pass an Engineer’s Act to screen those who are applying for these assignments. Its reason for doing this is to enrich portions of its constituency so that they can in turn be of use to the ruling party no matter the risk to the public purse from dodgy work.
A draft of an engineer’s bill is supposedly somewhere at Parliament but why after 44 months of this administration it is yet to be presented is a mystery.
In March of 2023, Mr Nandlall told Stabroek News that after being with a Cabinet sub-Committee since 2020, the draft bill had been reviewed and would soon be laid in Parliament.
“The intent is to create the most modern legal infrastructure available in order to create the type of regulatory framework necessary to bring efficiency and modernity to every sector, in particular those which involve infrastructural developments and the provision of social services to the people of Guyana. It is against this backdrop that the Engineer’s Bill of 2020 is to be situated,” Mr Nandlall had told Stabroek News.
Still to see the light of day, the delay prompted letter writer Mr Abraham David to ask in the March 27th 2024 edition of this newspaper “Editor, it is a week short of one year since your article and nearly sixteen years from the referenced year 2008. Can an update on this matter be provided please by either the Hon. Attorney General, Anil Nandlall or the Hon. Minister Juan Edghill?”
These project evaluation units will add a further unnecessary layer of bureaucracy – beloved by governments – at a further cost to the people of this country. Surely there will have to be new hirings at all of the ministries and at the Attorney General’s Chambers to accomplish this scrutiny of projects.
Why is this even necessary if each of these projects has a supervisory consultant attached for the exact purpose of monitoring whether specifications are being adhered to and the work is going according to plan? Perhaps there aren’t sufficient qualified engineers for this purpose? It makes absolutely no sense to be hiring consultants at phenomenal rates if they now have to be shadowed by a project evaluation unit. This is misguided governance and a waste of the money that is pouring into this country.
The answer is not a project evaluation unit or ministers showing alarm at sites when they themselves might be totally at sea, it is ensuring that when tenders are invited for major public works, qualified tenderers are selected by the evaluation committees of the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board ( NPTAB). That is not happening at the moment as evidenced by the shameless selection by the NPTAB of Tepui Inc to build a pump station at Belle Vue when it has had no such experience or selecting entertainers and football promoters to build a primary school at Bamia. This travesty has been compounded by the government’s installation of a Public Procurement Commission that is clearly reluctant to do its job or just simply derelict.
Given the massive brain drain and migration over the last five decades or so, the absorptive capacity just does not exist for the billions of dollars of oil revenues being poured into the economy. The government has to recognise this and modulate its priorities accordingly otherwise it will lurch from one failure to the next and not even the oil and gas sector will be spared. The likely move to arbitration by gas-to-energy contractor, CH4-Lindsayca over the sum of US$50 million is an example of what costly delays or below standard work can lead to when international companies are involved. In this case much is at stake here considering that the government has promised to cut energy rates by 50% by virtue of this project.
The ongoing problems at the Guyana Power and Light are also undoubtedly the offspring of limited absorptive capacity and the determination to make inappropriate appointments.
Whatever happens from this point onwards, the government must keep the public fully apprised of measures taken against contractors to protect the public purse. The public must be kept fully informed of terminations of contracts, levying on performance and mobilisation bonds and the tapping of liquidated damages. A much higher standard of work on public projects must be aimed for.
