Regarding the 6 million illegal medicine procurement at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), can the Public Health Minister assure us that the medicines have been supplied 100 per cent? Can the Minister also explain why there are still severe shortages of medicines at the GPHC? The Auditor General must immediately investigate this transaction. The Procurement Commission, homeless and sidelined as they are, ought to smell the stench from this cesspit. The Public Accounts Committee should insist on the Auditor General providing them with a timely report. A possible criminal act is begging for attention.
The A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) promised an open, transparent and accountable procurement system during the 2015 election campaign. Now, almost two years into their term, APNU/AFC, indeed, has transformed the procurement system, but has shamelessly transformed it into a corrupt enterprise. They have deliberately short-circuited the procurement system to benefit themselves and a few of their friends and political donors. Some of the extravagance and disregard for accountability reveal a shocking cesspit of corruption.
Recently, IPA, a company owned by an AFC donor, was awarded a contract to supply narcotic medicines for which that company had no import licence. Whether it was an open tender or a sole-sourced contract, IPA should have been deemed ineligible. This is not rocket science; as Sherlock Holmes would say, it is elementary. Unfortunately, for APNU/AFC, such contracts are par for the course, political paybacks, in which power-drunk politicians instruct public officials to ignore laws. Incidentally, the company fraudulently claimed they were acting on behalf of another company which has a licence to import narcotic medicines. Clearly the company committed fraud and the APNU/AFC is complicit in the fraud. No one has been disciplined and people suffered, because in the end, the drugs were never supplied.
Sadly, this is just one example of a wild orgy of contracts where merits count for nothing and political affiliation is the only measure for granting favors with taxpayers money. Citizens whose trust has been betrayed immediately see that it is not simple political favours, but corruption with public officials, the “big ones”, filling their pockets. In less than two years APNU/AFC is wallowing in a cesspit of corrupt deals, too numerable for anyone to keep a track of.
Take this example that is well-known among many people. A certain political donor who lives in America was given a contract to supply fertilisers to the Guyana Sugar Corporation and to the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) in late 2015-early 2016. He was being paid up-front with resources from the GRDB. This person had never been involved in the fertiliser trade. He was granted a sole-sourced contract not on his experience as a reliable supplier at a fair price, but on only one measure – he was a supporter and donor during the 2015 elections.
Take another example, a certain supporter of the AFC was given a huge contract, worth hundreds of millions, at the same time as the fertiliser contract to supply medicines. He did not have the funding and had no experience supplying medicines. He had never sold even an aspirin. Armed with a contract to supply medicines, he attempted to get funding from several persons and sought advice from people how to go about getting access to medicines. Eventually, he failed and this is one of the reasons why the public health sector continues to suffer from chronic medicine shortage. While the Public Health Ministry and the Ministers of APNU/AFC will try to obfuscate the issue by naming certain suppliers who did not supply medicines, they will not mention this contract. But this was the beginning of the mess.
The recent $606 million sole-sourced contract was justified on the basis that it was an emergency supply and that the beneficiary company, ANSA McCAL, had donated four refrigerators. Medicines worth $606 million cannot ever be an emergency purchase and a miserly donation of four refrigerators cannot provide justification for procuring medicines at grossly inflated prices. Grossly inflated prices cannot be justified on the basis of air-freights. If, indeed, a shortage was allowed to metastasise into such a huge shortage someone ought to be held responsible. The Minister knowingly disregarded the law and instructed a purchase in which emergency supplies were procured with an even larger non-emergency supplies.
These and myriad others of corrupt deals are direct betrayals of people’s trust. The open wounds are exacerbated by the insensitivity of APNU/AFC’s leadership when they defend and justify clearly corrupt deals. The Harmon announcement that there is no need to inquire into the Minister’s action is an insult to the Guyanese people. AFC’s announcement that they see no concern relating to the procurement and the Minister’s action betrays the trust people placed in them. A corrupt enterprise is abusing taxpayers rights and money, feel empowered and above accountability.
