Colin Steer, Associate Editor - Opinion
Sometimes amid outbreaks of violent conflicts in the island's prisons, inmates empty their slop buckets on advancing warders and other security officers, either in an act of contempt or, as they would claim, in self-defence. For their "insolence", they usually are hospitalized with broken bones and massive contusions.
In Jamaica, public officials have been routinely emptying their buckets on the public. But we, like the protagonist in Charles Dicken's Oliver Twist , continue to approach our wardens, bowl in hand, asking "Please sir, can I have some more?"
If the breaches reported by the Contractor General in relation to the Sandals Whitehouse project were isolated incidents, then we could, perhaps, accept as an excuse, that in the interest of project development and timely completion, bureaucracy had to be by-passed. But there really is nothing new or odd about the management of this particular project.
The conflict of interest, cronyism and by-passing of established procedures have become standard practice in the public sector. For the past 10 to 15 years, the annual Auditor General's and Contractor General's reports have been saying the same thing repeatedly. But is there any real public concern?
In relation to the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), excerpts of the Contractor General's report which were published in the Sunday Gleaner of July 31, 2005, read in part:
"In 2001, the NSWMA engaged the services of Jentech Consultants Ltd. for the design and supervision of the construction of a bridge spanning the Duhaney River at the Riverton landfill. The authority also re-engaged Jentech Consultants Ltd. on a sole source basis in July 2003 to provide consultancy services totalling $316,000 for the design of the subject access road. NSWMA invited Jentech Consultants to submit a fee proposal but no attempt was made to invite other consultants. Jentech is an engineering company led by Drs. Vin Lawrence and Wayne Reid ...
The NSWMA board and management made concerted efforts to circumvent the Government's procurement policy and procedures and also breached several sections of the Financial Administration and Audit Act (1959), the Revised Comprehen-sive Motor Vehicle Policy for the Public Sector (2003), and the National Solid Waste Manage-ment Act (2001). Such actions have helped to foster the public perception that the NSWMA is rife with corruption and cronyism."
Sounds familiar?
It is not without some significance that over the past 10 or so years, companies of which Drs Lawrence and Wayne Reid are principals have been the direct or indirect beneficiaries of a multiplicity of government contracts. Nor is it coincidental that these persons have more than passing influence in the governing People's National Party.
This scenario brings to mind a book written by a San Francisco-based journalist in the early 1980s in which he documented how the AIDS epidemic spread rapidly throughout parts of the United States especially among the homosexual community with its casual, indiscriminate sexual liaisons. In the book "And the band played on" the writer suggested that people were caught up in their own lives, wilfully ignoring warnings, while a plague of death was slowly spreading in their midst.
In respect of the waste of public funds and blatant corruption, our local bands have been playing their own music. And the public participates in a danse macabre while nurses, teachers and other public servants remain severely under-compensated and public institutions go to rot. Nothing new here, just another day in paradise.
