Last week, I promised to write about the clear misconduct in office of the Infrastructure Minister. His handling of the new Demerara River bridge is beyond scandal, corruption and ineptness. It is clearly misconduct in office. I felt I could have deferred highlighting that gross example of misconduct in office last week, choosing, instead, to highlight one that affected the lives of rice farmers. The continuing misconduct in office of the Agriculture Minister, who has gone AWOL as millers and, therefore, farmers, are owed about $2 billion for rice they exported to Panama more than one year ago, forced me to defer writing about the Demerara bridge scandal. I am about to break my promise and again defer writing about the Demerara bridge scandal because there are so many examples of misconduct in office right now.
There is the misconduct in office of the Ministers of Citizenship and Foreign Affairs, with thousands of Haitian citizens gone missing in Guyana, raising suspicion that there is an unholy plan to provide them with citizenship in order for them to vote in 2020; part of the plan to rig elections. There is misconduct in office of the Communities Minister, usurping power to change Amerindian villages into Neighbourhood Democratic Councils, raising suspicion that he is planning to gerrymander the Local Government results later this year. There is the misconduct in office of the Education Minister, with the National Grade Six Assessment results which the Ministry has had in their possession for some time now, but has withheld without any legitimate reason, raising suspicion among many that the Education Ministry is tampering with the results.
There are so many examples of misconduct in office that had I been writing a column dedicated to misconduct in office on a daily basis, I would face the dilemma everyday of which one to choose. They are all egregious, all with significant negative impacts on our people and country. In the midst of choosing which of the many examples of misconduct in office I wanted to highlight for this column, came news that the Public Health Ministry has paid out between July 2016 and March 2018 more than $264 million as rent for a house in Georgetown that they claimed they needed as a medical warehouse. This is the actual rent they paid. It does not include the VAT payment that the Government is paying on behalf of the owner of the building. It does not include the cost of air conditioning and the cost of security which are costs the Ministry assumed.
That scandal started with Minister Norton in 2016. It was corruption so easy for people to discern as it is easy to know that water is wet. Renting a house from a political affiliate and donor is bad enough, but renting a house at a cost which paid out for the house with less than two months’ rent is criminal. The new Public Health Minister in late 2016 claimed that the contract will be terminated. But it is now more than 18 months since that promise was made. The current Public Health Minister tells Parliament this week that her Permanent Secretaries, in October 2016 and October 2017, wrote to the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) donor who is the owner of the property giving notice of “quitting” the contract.
But the Ministry which had paid the first six months’ rent at a cost of almost $13 million per month in advance, even before the man had purchased the building for $25 million, has been dutifully paying the rent every month. From July 2016 to March 2018, the Minister has supervised a Ministry that has paid out more than $264 million in only rental charges. This is clearly abrogation of duty and misconduct in office. The taxpayers have been burdened with paying out more than a million US dollars for a building that cost the owners less than US$5000. The owner is being paid almost $1300 per square foot even after the Ministry informed the owner of the building that the contract will be terminated since October 2016. What is more egregious is that the building has never been certified as a legitimate drugs bond. The Ministry had an option in 2016 of paying $237 per square foot for a building that has been internationally certified as a medicine warehouse. The Ministry had used that internationally certified building for free for almost a decade. But the internationally certified warehouse is owned by NEW GPC, which tops the list on APNU/AFC’s black book and the non-certified one is owned by an APNU/AFC donor. This is beyond misconduct in office.
