IF WE are not extremely careful this country will rapidly degenerate into a state of kleptomania. Millions of dollars in public funds are being stolen or are going to waste with impunity. The latest development, this one involving the National Housing Development Corporation and the Operation Pride Projects that it administers, provides further fodder for those who would claim that we have lost our moral compass and we are now in a situation where anything goes and there is no stigma or a sense of shame for doing wrong.
Damage control and public relations razzle-dazzle is the name of the game on the part of the political administration and we are forced to wonder if there are any left in their midst who have a sense of outrage about what is taking place.
If the Opposition Spokesman on Finance, Audley Shaw, had not revealed what has happened and is happening at the National Housing Development Corporation would the public have been told about the resignation of the managing director Mr. Christopher Honeywell or of the audit that had been commissioned into the operations of the organisation? This audit, which the Minister of Housing Dr.Karl Blythe is disavowing and dismissing as flawed, found that millions of dollars were paid out to contractors on Operation Pride Projects, with very little work to show for it.
Dr. Blythe says he is now ordering detailed audits into the operations of all the agencies, which fall within his Ministerial portfolio, including the National Housing Development Corporation. If the findings warrant it, the proper course of action would be to turn over the audits to the Police Fraud Squad to let them determine if there is anything in it worth pursuing.
Another aspect of this affair relates to two employees of the NHDC who, according to Dr. Blythe, were dismissed by the Board but were reinstated and sent on leave with pay after he pointed out that "natural justice" required that they be given a hearing.
The chairman of the NHDC, Mr. Michael Vacianna, is a lawyer by profession and we would presume that the board he chaired have taken "natural justice" and all of the legal implications into consideration when it took the decision to dismiss the two employees for negligence in the performance of their duties.
Operation Pride was created with the laudable objective of providing housing for persons at the bottom of the socio-economic scale. What is being revealed about its operations would suggest that somewhere between concept and implementation something has gone horribly wrong.
