— for NDCs and municipalities

HEAD of the Regional Department at the Ministry of Communities (MoC), Bramahnand Singh, said the ministry is considering the establishment of district tender boards to ease the workload of regional boards.

He said the matter was discussed by ministry officials last January.
“It’s something that we’re exploring. The regions already have their planned programme for the year and there are a lot of projects under the regional programmes. If we have a district tender board, we could put an ease on the regional tender board and we could get procurement done in a more effective way. It’s a consideration, so we’re exploring how possible that is,” Singh said.

Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs) and municipalities across the country receive hundreds of millions of dollars from central government each year, in direct subvention, as well as spending for other individual projects.

For 2019, the 70 NDCs will receive $5M each, while the 10 municipalities had their subvention increased from $15M to $18M.

Currently, the 10 municipalities across Guyana handle their own procurement.
Each municipality has a finance committee which observes the roles and functions of a regional tender board.

However, this has not proven to be in the best interest of spending over the years.
Last year, during the course of a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into City Hall, the damning revelations came to light that then Georgetown Town Clerk, Royston King, unilaterally contracted several companies to carry out millions worth in works without issuing formal contracts.

From all indications, none of the works ever followed the proper procurement practices and from all appearances, the situation had been going on for years.

Most of the revelations involved the handling of the $700M given to City Hall incrementally since 2015, under the Georgetown Restoration Programme.

In the Audit Office’s latest report on the project, over $70M was unaccounted for. Several stipulations governing spending of the money were never adhered to.
ABUSE

There was at least one case of a single contractor being awarded 12 contracts, totalling $21M, despite the fact that there was a stipulation in place which allowed a maximum four contracts per contractor.

The project was allocated another $300M in the 2019 national budget.
MoC Permanent Secretary, Emil McGarrell, said the ministry would look to execute projects under the fund using the national procurement system to address the accountability issues.
Singh explained that in the absence of the district board, procurement breaches and financial abnormalities would be picked up by the Audit Office in their annual audits, where the Auditor General makes recommendations on the way forward and how the MoC is to take actions.

However, this has shown to have its glitches, given that the report is done annually but procurement breaches and misappropriation of funds at City Hall had gone on for years, despite being flagged multiple successive years, even as the municipality continues to receive monies from central government.

He said having the NDCs procurement done at the Regional Board level is putting a strain on those boards.

The Procurement Act 2003 which governs the procurement of goods and services by government, provides for the creation of district tender boards to regulate procurement of goods and services by the Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs), Singh said, noting that it would also cover the municipalities.

Such a board would come under the National Tender Administration under the Ministry of Finance and would include two members appointed by the relevant regional board and one member appointed by the relevant Neighbourhood Democratic Council.
However, the creation of the board will not be without its challenges.

“We have to look at the human resources and the capacity of the NDC to take on that additional responsibility of having a district tender board. The guidelines and policies would have to come through the Ministry of Finance because it would be the same procurement practices that govern the procurement process you would have to be following,” Singh explained.