Civil society groups are not interested in real accountability . Part Three

Integrity Commission 2021/2022 Annual Report

In the 2022/2022 report, the Integrity Commission cited 6Parliamentarians  and 28 Public officials as being investigated for illicit enrichment. Are we to assume that members of civil society and the media

1. Did not read this report and so were never aware these 28 Public Officials
2. Read the report and chose to ignore the glaring 28 public officials
3. Read the report and decided they want the public to focus on 6 only

I don’t have the answer, so only they can respond

In the same Integrity report the following was noted

The government of Jamaica has provided a level of transparency never seen before with government and just for the public information, the Integrity Commission provides a quarterly update of all government contracts, to include.

1. Value of each contract
2. The procurement entity
3. Value of the contract
4. Who received the contract/

The information can be accessed here.

https://integrity.gov.jm/qca-consol

Example of what you will see on this site

In addition to this, the Government of Jamaica has added another site that allows for ordinary Jamaicans to view the contracts that have been put out to tender and all details related to these contracts.

This site which has been approved by the World Bank is  Government of Jamaica Electronic Procurement Portal and can be accessed here  https://www.gojep.gov.jm/epps/home.do

This level of transparency which are all designed to reduce the incidence of theft and illicit enrichment has never existed in Jamaca before.

Here is an example of what you can get here.

I say to the people don’t be misled by so called civil society groups and the media, instead seek out the information yourself.

The issue of illicit enrichment via contracts by Parliamentarians and politicians in general has gotten extremely difficult and while the same may exist for public officials, the fact that they are an integral part of the process, allows them greater access to public funds.

If we really want to stamp out corruption and in particular illicit enrichment, we are likely to get greater levels of success from going after to a larger pool of people with greater access to public funds.

I put it to you that the noise being generated by the Integrity Commission 2022/2023 is just that, noise all, and it not meant to reduce incidences of illicit enrichment  but are instead  meant to bring about a political coup and entrust government to those they favour.

Civil society groups are not interested in real accountability . Part Two

Integrity Commission 2019/2020 annual report

Two  public officials listed. One went to court and was found not guilty, while the other had a court case, the outcome which was never found. The timelines were a bit off, since the Gleaner report was in 2013 yet the public official who was already before the courts was listed in the 2019/2020 report. Of note one public official pleaded guilty to illicit enrichment in the Gleaner report. This is in keeping with my statement above , where I asserted that the public officials have the greatest access to public funds and is where the focus ought to be.

Integrity Commission 2020/2021 Annual Report

In the 2020/2021 report, the Integrity Commission cited 2 Parliamentarians  and 6 Public officials as being investigated for illicit enrichment. Are we to assume that members of civil society and the media :

a) Did not read this report and so were never aware these two
b) Read the report , but chose not to make the information public for whatever reason
c) Did not think it would gain any political traction so did not comment
I don’t have the answer, so only they can respond

Integrity Commission 2021/2022 Annual Report

In the 2021/2022 report, the Integrity Commission cited 1 Parliamentarians  and 3 Public officials as being investigated for illicit enrichment. Are we to assume that members of civil society and the media

1. Did not read this report and so were never aware these two
2. Read the report , but chose not to make the information public for whatever reason
3. Did not think it would gain any political traction so did not comment

I don’t have the answer, so only they can respond

Civil society groups are not interested in real accountability . Part One

I have long held the view that most of Jamaca’s civil society groups are political activist masquerading as the social conscience of the Jamaican society.

These groups continue almost on a weekly bias to lose the trust and confidence of the Jamaican people as they now seem to be getting desperate in their attempts to paint this administration as one that does not want to be held accountable and is corrupt.

Let’s look at their reaction to the Integrity Commission 2022/2023 annual report, where it was reported that fifty-two(52)  public officials ( i.e., people being paid by the public purse) are under investigation for illicit enrichment and or false information.

These civil society groups ignored the 46 members of the public officials and zeroed in on 6 politicians . Most members of the public have not read the Integrity Commission and are relying solely on the public release from civil society groups and would be under the impression that only 6 persons are under investigation.

Let’s think about this for a second, why should the 46 other people who are under investigation not be asked to step aside while the investigation is being conducted vs just the 6 politicians, who these groups perceive are members of the ruling party.

Let me spend a few minutes educating the public on several things, which shows why the focus really ought to be on the 46 and less so on the 6.

Let’s examine how politicians have in the past stolen money from the public purse for self-enrichment.

Public Contracts

Government spends billions of  dollars each year in public contracts as well as public procurement of goods and services, and this has been the way politicians in the past have been able to siphon off public funds from themselves.

Public capitals projects have been the  main access to funds by corrupt politicians , but this has all changed over the last 10 years or so.

Currently, it’s extremely difficult for any politician to influence and corruptly benefit from these massive public expenditures, which would have been the primary source for illicit benefits.

The politicians of today have virtually no access to public funds, but the same cannot be said for many public officials, who have significant access to public funds.

Many of these have direct access, via sourcing of goods and services, approval of purchase orders as well as invoices as well as the final payments, putting them in direct contact with billions of dollars of public funds.

Despite the above, we are being told,  “oh we really have no interest in those folks”, it’s the politicians we are after for illicit enrichment.  Clearly what we have at play is nothing but a ruse by civil society groups to try and influence the political process but pulling nothing short of a political coup and in so seeking to install the political party of their choice.

Why, do I say this. Well, the evidence is there for all to see, if the public officials have greater access to public funds as I have described above, the focus on illicit enrichment really ought to be targeted at those people, vs other without that level of access.

Having said that, why are we not seeing that and why is the public being led to believe its only 6 people who are under investigation.

Let’s go back and look at previous Integrity Commission annual reports , again something these groups have chosen to ignore for whatever reason.

To be continued in Part 2

The 1976 State of Public Emergency P4

The 1976 State of Public Emergency P3

The 1976 State of Public Emergency P2

The 1976 State of Public Emergency P1

Credits to the National Library of Jamaica

Public Sector Transformation and Wage Concerns. This is my take on the matter

I note the spate of industrial actions by public workers which appears to be based on rank misinformation and an unwillingness to listen and trying to understand what is being placed on the table in relation to the rolling of allowances into salaries and wages.

How did we come to this point and is it that the leadership of the unions have not take the timeout to understand what is at play and simply following the workers instead of leading them. Is it that the government has failed to properly communicate ?

I heard one union man telling his people that if workers wages move from $1.5m to $1.6m then all $1.6m will be taxed at 25%, which is simply wrong.

Now I believe the PM and Minister of Finance has said the move will not result in anyone being worse off and this is how I see things playing out .

From the above no one would be worse off even when allowances are rolled into the salaries and wages and taxed.

Jamaica needs a covid vaccination reset , give us something to look forward to.

The government need to pause for few days and give us what I call a reset.

While the government has stated broadly what it wants to accomplish, it must further break that down into a set of smaller objectives with timeline that people can relate to then push the vaccination message to meet those specific objective

We must set definitive targets and tell people on a daily basis how we are tracking with respective to those targets. The faster we can hit those targets the faster we can back to some sort of order .

This is a example of what I am suggesting the government work on, tell the people, and put this information all over.

Use the electronic bulletin boards on the street, use all social media platforms, radio and TV and state where we are and number of days we are away from each target based on actual real time data.

We must give people something to work towards and hence this is my suggested approach

Give us a target and watch us hit it .

Bless

Oxygen crises and what appears to be the problem

There are two issues at play in relation to the oxygen issues and both appears to have been conflated to create some amount of confusion in the public space.

This was ignited when IGL issued a statement which appears to have suggested that they have not received information from the government in relation to the current surge, which is the reason for the shortage of the life saving commodity.

The MOHW has however shotback indicating that IGL was in fact given a projection for the volume of oxygen required to meet the demand for the current surge and which IGL agreed to, but its IGL that has failed to deliver on that due to a disruption in its supply chain due to an act of force majeure, enforced by one of its key suppliers.

BTW at no point did Peter Graham say they were NOT provided a demand requirement for this surge, if someone can find where he did, please let me know

The big question is now, who is telling the truth.( the real question is the truth about what, given there are two issues that both parties have addressed.)

I won’t try to answer that question since IGL has not yet responded to the claims made by the Ministry, however what I want to do, is to take a closer look at both statement and then allow you to determine if either party is telling the truth as both statement could in fact be true. (Yes they addressed different issues, even though they appear to be dealing with the same problem. One issue is long-term planning , which is what the company wants to be addressed and the other is short term delivery of the product, which is the MOHW immediate concern )

IGL Statement

IGL has made it clear that it has suppliers contract with only one of the 4 regional health authorities that exist, and has failed to secure contracts with and or projections from the other 3.

Now why are these supplier contracts important to the business?

Well, having a suppliers contract presents an obligation on the part of the IGL to meet the performance criteria of such a contract, which would mean they are obligated to supply to the customer, the volume required to the customer on time and in full . The customer on the other hand is obligated to provide a rolling forecast as well as purchase orders ( commitment) to purchase the commodity overtime .

It’s this demand from the customer that will tell the CEO what he needs to do from a capacity perspective, so let me give you an example.

Lets say the combined annual demand for medical oxygen from all the regional health authorities is 1,000,000 m3 per annum and the production capacity of the plant at IGL at full utilization is currently 950,000m3 , then IGL would now be obligated to either

• Find suppliers to meet this additional 50,000 m3 per annum
• Upgrade the plant to not only meet this, but to exceed that, with additional capacity added for increased future demand

No CEO will make any significant capital investment without some knowledge of demand requirements, nor will they take a decision to make those investments without some definitive agreement aka a supplier contract in hand, as at any point the customer could simply say, I am not buying from you anymore, thus leaving them with stranded cost, which is essentially capital spend that you cannot recover.

So IGL would be right in saying it has only one contract in place and this is NOT enough for them to lay out huge capital expenditure unless there is some way for them to recover those investments over time, its just business.

(By the way IGL has not said this, but by virtue of how business operates, this would be the main reason)

MOHW Statement

In relation to the current crises, I am of the view that the MOH did in fact provide IGL with those projections for the expected surge only. IGL in its statement did say it experienced supply chain issues o one of which was related weather( a previous statement) the other being a supplier invoking the force majeure clause in its purchase agreement, which ended up with us being in this predicament.

Next Step

Government procurement guidelines are rigid and inflexible and are NOT designed for efficiency, but are instead designed to reduce corruption, which in turns suffocates the process . Any attempt to use emergency procurement is viewed with suspicion and as such most civil servants will NOT and I repeat will NOT put their career on the line by trying to act quickly by even using these emergency guidelines .

In addition the Integrity Commission has a way out putting out statements to suggest impropriety which will be latched unto by the opposition, so we end up with a process that is said to reduce corruption but CANNOT respond in a timely fashion to the requirements of the country especially in cases on emergency.

The MOHW I know will say they cannot engage IGL by giving them supplier contract for all 4 regional health authorities and must follow the procurement guidelines which goes like this

1. Draft procurement documents ( no less that 100 pages)
2. Have documents reviewed by legal team
3. Send out this by way of public tender via local papers and on MOHW website( everyone free to bid even overseas suppliers)
4. Respond to or clarify parts of the RFP
5. Receive and open these proposals
6. Have a committee , to review, legal, procurement team, maybe IT etc
7. State who has won the bid
8. Provide a written contract to the bidder
9. Successful bidder can now deploy resources to the contract
10. Time from 1 – 9 could easily be 1 year.

The simple fact is IGL cannot be expected to undertake any massive capital spend without contracts in hand, as handshake and telephone commitment cannot be used as the basis of these investments.

The Government must therefore put to tender if it must and allow IGL to tender to supply medical oxygen to all 4 regional health authorities , as without having such a process completed, we could very well be back here a few years from now.

IGL is private business and their must be a return on its investments plus there must be basis for such investments for them to be approved by their board of directors.

Just a final note, production facilities at never designed for maximum possible demand as we are seeing now , which is 400% above normal demand, they are designed for steady state or optimum demand, with the capacity to adjust for short term seasonal spikes .

Yeah it long I know

Bless