–Min. Jordan keen on trying foreign contractors, to put an end to ‘sloppy work’

FINANCE Minister Winston Jordan has had it with the “sloppy work” being done by local contractors.
And with good reason too, as it’s costing the government a pretty penny to undo, billions of dollars, he said.
He has a simple solution to the problem; one that involves international assistance and proper supervision.

“We need our contractors and varying other works people to be exposed not only to international learning, but to technology transfer,” he said.
How does he plan on going about it? By inviting international contractors to bid for local projects, he told media operatives here Monday during a meeting at his Main Street office.
He explained that with every renovation the administration has to undertake, it is forced to spend money that could have been otherwise utilised.
He said that for decades, people have been complaining about the sloppy work being done by local contractors, which, in some instances in the government’s case, has resulted in delays in implementing projects.

He strongly believes that this matter could be adequately addressed if local contractors are able to observe the use of technology from international contractors.
All well and good, he said, once we can get them to overlook the perception abroad that corruption is rife here.
“When you look at it, even regional contractors, outside of two from Trinidad and someone out of Jamaica, I don’t know that we have ever been able to attract serious contractors even from the Region,” Minister Jordan said.

He feels that there’s more to building roads than meets the eye. “It’s not just about all these fancy degrees and so on,” he said. “Roads have certain ingredients that have to go in. Road-building is a function of how good the consultant is; you’re paying a consultant to make certain the contractor is not cheating or is not cutting corners.”
He is also of the opinion that sloppy supervision begets sloppy work. “Bad roads and bad works will be done because of poor supervision,” he said, adding that emphasis has to be placed on the consultants.

BETTER PACKAGING

He said, too, that better packages need to be developed, a method he said that was tried by the previous administration, but turned out to be a huge failure for the want of better planning.

“I believe the last government, in a bid to boost local capacity, broke up large packages into smaller packages,” he said. “For example, the East Bank Road… I think, in hindsight, it was a huge error. Three contractors doing different stretches of a continuous road is bad news! Three persons doing a continuous road is asking for three different results!”
Don’t get him wrong, he said. It is not that he wants to sideline our local contractors, but capacity-building is important, if we want to ensure people get quality for their money.
Using the Ogle bypass road to drive home the point he made earlier about the problem the government has with hiring from overseas, Minister Jordan said that much as it was a multi-million-dollar project, U.S.$50M to be exact, it was difficult finding a contractor or consultants interested enough in taking the job.

“It is very difficult… so, thanks to the Indian High Commission, they were able to work with us. Now we have found someone with some interest in it,” he said, adding that it is vitally important that local contractors align themselves with persons who have the requisite expertise if they want to be successful.

PSIP PERFORMANCE

As to the issue of the sloth with which the Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP) is being implemented, Minister Jordan is of the belief that the establishment of a “Delivery Unit” could prove beneficial, but that it is up to Cabinet to make that decision.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is reportedly working with the government on improving the performance of the PSIP, but according to Minister Jordan, there are several issues that yet need to be addressed.
Noting that the IDB is helping in that regard, Minister Jordan said:
“They didn’t come here necessarily to put in a delivery unit; they came here to do a diagnostic of the problems affecting the PSIP in the entire value chain; from the time the loan is announced to post-evaluation.”
Back in June, the minister had disclosed that less than 30 per cent of PSIP funds had been expended, and that for this year, the government had set aside $58B for the programme.
Asked specifically at the time about the reason for the continued sloth in implementing projects, the minister had responded by saying that all he knew was that the agencies can no longer make the excuse of having to work with a late budget.
“No late-budget excuse is applicable any longer, because for Budget 2017, the presentation to Parliament was on November 28, 2016, a signal accomplishment of this administration,” he had said.
He, however, explained that a working group has been set up to look at what needs to be implemented with urgency, and said that contrary to what people think, the government has not been brushing the issue under the carpet.

PLAY BY THE RULES
He also hastened to explain that when it comes to international agencies and the projects they fund, there is a rule book by which one is guided. “And deviating from that rule book is not easy,” he said.
And while he readily acknowledged that government spending does act as a trigger in the revitalisation of any economy, it does have its challenges.
But, he said, the government is committed to transparency and accountability and is prepared to stand by its word.
Said he: “It is easy to call a friend and say, ‘Listen, I have a project coming up to build a road; it will be $100M. Put in your bid, and you’re going to get it.’
“When you ask for transparency, it is a process that has to be gone through; and that process starts from getting out your bids in the public, evaluating those bids and coming up with a winner of the bid, having the person lodge their bond… It is a long process.But,long though it is,it’s the right procedure,in that the people of Guyana are getting just what they were asking for all along prior to 2015.
“You can’t speed up the process; that is the process,” he declared.
As to the myriad problems the government has been having with human resources, Minister Jordan said the IDB has been helping in that regard, providing extensive training and facilitating quite a few workshops for potential evaluators.
As he readily admitted: “We have serious human resource problems. When we came in here, no agency was doing procurement planning.”
But it’s a problem that is not limited to the Ministry of Finance, he said, as all the ministries, with the exception of the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, are similarly afflicted.

‘DEAD-WEIGHT’ LOANS

There’s also the problem of what he’d like to call “dead-weight loans,” which he said the present administration has inherited aplenty.
He gave as an example of what he was talking about, the widening of Sheriff Street project, the over U.S.$60M for which, though it was approved since 2012, was never utilised.
When the coalition government took office in 2015, a decision was made to reformulate the loan, something to which the IDB has agreed.
On the issue of housing, Minister Jordan said U.S.$30M has been identified to give the matter top priority.
“We are now devising a housing programme with the IDB; a novel one, too, that will have a number of innovative features,” he said, adding:
“But I can’t discuss them now, because we are still in discussion stage. We are trying not to make it a run-of-the-mill loan; and that will help in a number of areas, including people who actually own homes now, but are too poor to rehabilitate them.”
What’s left of it when the project is done, he said, will likely go towards the rehabilitation of the bridges along Sheriff Street.
“We don’t know whether time would allow for this type of reformulation, or whether we’d have to give up these resources,” he said.
What he does know, however, is that the “dead-weight loans” have affected Guyana’s allocation cycle tremendously, as it is now paying the price for not having disbursed them within a specified time.
“In fact, new lending to Guyana has come under stress from these multilateral agencies because of our implementation ratio,” Minister Jordan said, but hastened to reassure that every effort has since been made to plan ahead, so that disbursement can be timely.