Bahamas
The government is raising the constituencies capital grant in the upcoming fiscal year from $100,000 per constituency to $150,000.
It is also increasing the monthly constituency allowances from $2,500 to $3,500. The allowances are made to keep constituency offices operational.
The capital grant is allocated for each MP to undertake various projects in his or her constituency.
All grants payable under the Constituency Capital Grant Act are paid out of the Consolidated Fund.
The law permits the MP to determine which capital development projects are necessary in his or her constituency.
Each MP is mandated to keep proper accounts and reports and the auditor general is required to audit such accounts at the end of each fiscal year.
When he contributed to the budget debate in the House of Assembly on Wednesday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell, who is the MP for Fox Hill and also chairman of the Progressive Liberal Party, sought to make a case for why MPs should be getting way more than $150,000.
Mitchell said, “Members of Parliament have a very important job to do in trying to keep the government connected to the people who they govern, but also in making sure that the peace is kept in their communities and also making sure that the infrastructure in their communities is up to standard and up to scratch.
“And the citizens of the country, in terms of the level of public education, see no distinction, it appears, between public monies and your own personal monies.
“The attitude is that the MP can go in their pocket and fix it … but that’s not the case. Most of us are men and women of ordinary means and you have to apply yourself in the judicious use of public funds to meet the greater demands of the Bahamian public.”
He said if it were up to him, MPs would each have $1 million in the budget to carry out work in their constituency.
But why should that be supported in the absence of full transparency on how MPs are today spending the $100,000 they are allocated every year for constituency projects or the $30,000 they are allocated to keep their constituency offices open.
Are MPs segregating funds or are they treating the accounts into which these funds are sent as accounts also for their private interests?
Are the contracts awarded to carry out the works in their constituencies going to tender or are they handpicking who gets those contracts?
Though MPs are required to make quarterly reports to the finance ministry on how their funds are spent, the public is in the dark on how these allocations are being spent. We have not seen any audit that shows that the allocations are being used as intended and while Mitchell advocates for a portion of the Ministry of Works’ budget to also be transferred for MPs to spend, we do not hear anyone advocating for accountability and transparency regarding current expenditures.
The pubic is also still largely in the dark on contracts entered into by the Davis administration since it came to office.
In February, Prime Minister Philip Davis, who is the minister of finance, insisted his administration is transparent and accountable and said the Ministry of Finance in conjunction with Go Bondfire e-procurement platform is finalizing a report on contracts awarded by his administration since coming to office in September 2021, and will aim to have the first edition published “in due course”.
Four months later, the promised information has still not been published. When we contacted the financial secretary yesterday, he said only the list is being finalized.
In February, the prime minister also said in the House of Assembly he has not tabled a report on pandemic spending as required by law because the information needed for the report just is not there.
We don’t expect the government will ever follow the law in this regard.
Before any MP fixes his mouth to call for an even larger capital grant or constituency allowance, the public ought to have access to a full accounting on monies already being spent.
When it comes to public money, parliamentarians must stop acting as if they are spending their own funds.
There is no “new day” approach to accounting in this regard.
more
Image: pexels-olia-danilevich-5466785
Read more
Jamaica
Kingston-based engineering and contracting firm Arel Limited has set its sights firmly on being selected as a preferred supplier for billions of dollars worth of imaging equipment to the nation’s hospitals.
The company, which supplies imaging equipment such as computerised tomography (CT) scan machines, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, X-ray machines and ultrasound machines, did a study assessing the needs of the country’s hospitals as a first step to securing a supplier contract. Arel is Jamaica’s representative for GE Healthcare equipment.
“In terms of equipment, we are talking about the order of over US$30 million worth of equipment that are needed now,” Earl Spence, director of medical sales and services at Arel Limited, told the Jamaica Observer in an interview. Spence said the estimate is for more than 40 pieces of imaging equipment desperately needed for the nation’s hospitals.
“We know exactly what are in those hospitals, because we would have supplied them,” Patricia Henry, CEO of Arel Limited, highlighted. Henry has been in that role since December.
While Arel did the study to determine the equipment needs for Jamaica’s hospitals, it however was not offered a sole source contract with the Government opening up the possibility of supplying the sector to other contractors as well.
“A tender is out to supply the hospitals with equipment, maybe through a public private partnership, and we are going to bid, but it is really our project that we brought to the table,” Henry emphasised.
Spence said this would be the first time since preparations were being made for the hosting of Cricket World Cup 2007 that any new equipment on the scale of what is being proposed now was bought by Government.
However, he said with general practitioners requesting more and more imaging services for their patients, the need for the equipment is growing each year.
“The problem is that some of these machines need special siting, especially the MRI or a CT scan machine. We would need a room to put them in, and those rooms don’t exist at some hospitals,” Spence continued. He said a solution has been proposed to get over that hurdle.
“You have hospitals out there, like Lionel Town and Spalding and Morant Bay, which have very minimal imaging equipment, and then you have Mandeville, May Pen, Cornwall Regional and KPH, etc, where the needs are different,” he pointed out. Getting imaging machines in more places would not only help to relieve pressure on the limited ones now available, but would also minimise the need for patients to be transferred to another facility to get the imaging done. He said a proposal was also made for the Bustamante Hospital for Children in St Andrew to be equipped with a CT machine.
Still, despite the need, getting the equipment requires money and the Government has been exploring at least two possibilities, buying them outright or renting the equipment from suppliers.
“We could buy the equipment and rent the Government, so we would get rental income flowing in. Also, being that we are associated with Eppley [an investment company], we can get funding from that company to buy the equipment to rent the Government,” Henry said, indicating that talks suggest the equipment will be acquired in phases.
“We have a contract to supply six X-ray machines to the South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA),” Spence told the Business Observer. He said three are for the Kingston Public Hospital, while the National Chest Hospital, Bustamante Hospital for Children, and the Spanish Town Hospital will receive one each.
Still, the diversified engineering company has its sights on growth outside of supplying hospitals with equipment. In October last year, the Musson Group and Productive Business Solutions (PBS), along with other equity shareholders including Henry, invested in the company. While it is not clear how much all invested, PBS’s financial statements for 2022 showed it acquired roughly 17 per cent of Arel for a consideration of US$246,000. At that investment amount, the valuation is US$1,441,378.10 for the overall company.
“My mandate is to increase revenues 20 per cent to 25 per cent this year,” Henry told the Business Observer. The company’s revenues are “generally in the vicinity of $1.2 billion per year”. As for profitability, it has been “on and off”.
So far, Arel has been working on various projects to date and has signed contracts to execute others, including supplying elevator and electrical services to two buildings that are under construction for use in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, and a contract with Kingston Wharves. It also has the contract to supply the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH), which has been undergoing a lengthy renovation, with air conditioning.
more
Image: pexels-pixabay-355948.
Read more
Cayman Islands
(CNS): Five years, seven months and 18 days after it was selected as the preferred bidder in October 2017 by the PPM government, the Dart Group has still not signed the deal that will see it roll out the long-awaited waste-management project, known as ReGen. Premier Wayne Panton announced Monday that the parties have agreed to push back the “stop date” until the end of July.
Since taking office in April 2021, the PACT Government has been scrutinizing the agreement signed by the previous administration just weeks before the general election. Panton has said on a number of occasions that there were significant problems with the deal that the Unity government had signed, and he intended to review the agreements and ensure value for money.
The true costs of this project have yet to be revealed but it is currently estimated to be in the region of $1.5 billion.
However, the talks have dragged on well past the original financial close date and have continued to prove challenging. Despite the optimism of the premier, who has suggested the end “is in sight”, this is by no means the first time that a target date to seal the deal has come and gone.
“We are at a critical stage in contract negotiations,” Panton said in his latest statement released yesterday. “Both the government and the Dart-led consortium are working hard to finalise the last few details remaining to secure financial close.”
The premier said the government and Dart had recognised that these remaining details wouldn’t be wrapped up or the necessary approvals obtained by 31 May, the previous date when officials had said the deal would be signed.
“Both parties have agreed to push the long stop date to 31 July,” he said. “The length of the project negotiations reflects both the complexity of the project and the project team’s desire to ensure ReGen is done right. This project includes the construction of infrastructure we expect to deliver decades of sustainable waste management to the people of the Cayman Islands. We know how urgent our solid
waste management challenges are and that we have limited capacity on the current site.”
Panton said the government was taking its “obligation to address the challenges in a fiscally responsible, timely and sustainable way very seriously”.
To date, Dart has been working on capping and remediating a significant part of the George Town landfill. This was a key goal of the islands’ largest landowner and a significant motivator for the company’s decision to bid on the project after the efforts to move the dump to Bodden Town failed almost twelve years ago in 2011.
But in the haste to cover up the unsightly pile of rubbish next to its flagship development, Camana Bay, there is now only a small area of the old dump left for tipping the excessive amount of garbage that Grand Cayman generates every day.
As a result, this area of the landfill is expected to run out of space before Dart completes the proposed waste-to-energy facility where, in future, the country’s rubbish will be burned.
The environmental impact assessment, which is not expected to be completed before the end of this year, is underway. The previous government waived the entire planning process for the project. But even after the deal is signed, work on that part of the facility can’t begin until the EIA is finished since it will inform the design and engineering of that project.
Meanwhile, there has been no advancement in the development of a composting area at the site; recycling has declined rather than increased after Dart chose not to replace its glass recycling machine, and no work at all has been done to begin trying to reduce the amount of goods we consume or reuse what has been generally discarded.
In March, Auditor General Sue Winspear revealed that the Cayman Islands produces five times the global average of rubbish every day. In a report looking at Cayman’s progress in meeting the UN development goals, she said that none had been made on the government’s own targets to cut the amount of trash going to the dump every day, and there are almost no strategies in place to do that.
more
Image: pexels-savvas-stavrinos
Read more
Guyana
Questions asked by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) about the rationale behind the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs’ decision to sign a contract a week before it was awarded by the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) were left unanswered due to the absence of former permanent secretary (PS) Samantha Fedee.
During the scrutiny of the Auditor General’s 2019 report, the committee sought answers on the procurement breach, which was flagged in the report.
Government member Dhankumar Seeraj asked for an explanation which acting PS Ryan Toolsiram was unable to give. He indicated that efforts were made by the ministry and the parliamentary committee to summon Fedee to the meeting but she indicated she was going to be out of the country.
On this note, Financial Secretary Sukrishnalall Pasha emphasised the importance of having former officers present at meetings.
“Without the former PS it would be difficult for us to get answers. There is no amount of research you can do to get into the head of the person who made a clear breach of the law,” he said.
The contract in question was for recapping sections of compound, and clearing western and eastern drains of the hinterland scholarship students’ dormitory at Liliendaal. The cost of the contract was $3.5 million.
In response to the Auditor General’s queries, the Head of the Budget Agency acknowledged the error and promised that the ministry would desist from such actions in the future.
Attempting to provide clarity to the PAC, the Auditor General said that from the documentation provided to his office, the PS, in a letter to the NPTAB, explained that the work was awarded to a contractor on the grounds of an emergency. The letter, dated December 23, 2019, stated that the contract was awarded due to flooding at the dormitory.
Seeraj then questioned:“How is it that you sign a contract one week before NPTAB issue the award? It is impossible for you to know who the award will go to.”
The audit report stated that the contract was awarded by NPTAB on 23 December 2019. However, the contract was signed by the ministry and the contractor on 16 December 2019. Further, the ministry issued a commencement order on 17 December 2019.
more
Image: pexels-weiye-tan-6464248
Read more
Jamaica
Tenders are expected to go out today (May 16) for the acquisition of a new mobile pump to help mitigate flooding from the Caroni River into farmlands.
But, with the rainy season approaching, a mobile pump from the Agriculture Ministry’s existing stock will be used, if needed, until the new unit is sourced.
Responding to questions in the Senate on Tuesday, Minister in the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries, Avinash Singh could not give a timeframe for the acquisition of the pump, noting that the process will be dictated by the procurement.
The award of the tender is expected by June 16.
Singh noted that fiscal 2023 will see focus placed on treating with areas the Caroni River overtops its banks to limit the losses for Orange Grover farmers.
He noted that the sluice gate at the southwestern end of the Orange Grove project requires some attention, as it’s been breached, especially during periods of heavy rainfall.
The Minister outlined the work to be done.
He said: “The issues that need to be addressed are: repair of the leaking sluice gates on the Caroni River; accelerating the rate of removal of water from the project area; repair of the broken cylinder crossing across the road that leads to the sluice gate; addressing the overtopping of the Caroni River embankment in certain areas.
Under the 2023 PSIP, we are replacing the single sluice gate that discharges into the Caroni River with a double 4ft wide sluice gate system. The new system will also contain flap gates to restrict flow of water into the project from the Caroni River.”
Singh noted that the Agriculture Ministry has also sought technical assistance from the Drainage Division of the Ministry of Works and Transport, particularly with the low-lying areas in the Caroni River embankment.
While the other flood gates at the Arouca River and the Dinsley River are functional, an assessment on those gates will also be undertaken.
more
Image: pexels-pok-rie-6471926
Read more
