Standard rules of administration must be complied with

Posted December 20th. 2002 by Eusi Kwayana.

Dear Editor,
The ill-advised violence by what I am calling the armed opposition, not the official opposition, and the drug violence are a good, total screen for the rampant misgovernment which is the daily order, whether it is mere ignorance, mistake, irregularity, stark corruption and theft or the channelling of public resources to selected party supporters on hidden terms. These abuses are not stopped but are protected by violence.

It is time for us to realise that standard rules of administration have long experience behind them and should not be brushed aside as mere bureaucracy, as Dr. Ramsammy seems to be attempting to do. The way to keep bureaucracy responsive is through Parliament, the press and media, NGOs, unquoted bulletins like Watchpost, and full support for the Auditor General. My long experience in tracking corruption advises that the Ministry of Health-GPHC situation is not only "untidy" but also unhealthy and permissive. It is just lucky that the GPHC Board referred the matter to the proper agency. My experience with a former Minister of Public Service Management is that he referred not my complaint, but me to the Ministry I was complaining against!

I wish to add my concerns to what has so far been published, or rather reported, about the minister's transactions.

1. Before we go to the Integrity Act, there is the Oath of Office, which every Member of Parliament takes, and which I have always argued should be enforceable. A Minister takes an oath or makes an affirmation to "bear true faith and allegiance to the people of Guyana".

2. From what I read, it seems that the Minister is not aware that the accounting officer of his Ministry is the Permanent Secretary. We are not told that the PS was consulted, approached for advice, or played any part in these unhealthy transactions in the Ministry of Health.

3. What was the process by which Dr. Ramsammy came to use the GPHC's driver and moreover, by which he came to be receiving a car allowance? During the time he was receiving it, what did he think it was for? As the lawyers would ask, what was his state of mind?

4. The good Minister-Doctor says that he was not double dipping. The standard is not against "double dipping" but against dipping.

5. The Minister says, "We were responding to our needs." This is a very loaded excuse. It is one most of the people in Camp Street prison have made. It is the one made by apologists for some of the political violence, and it is not a valid excuse. A rapist can make that claim, though it cannot be accepted.

6. The most astonishing exposure of Dr. Ramsammy's intrusion into places forbidden to elected officials is his commingling of his own funds with those of the ministry. The goodly gentleman used his own paycheck, -with the extra which did not belong to him- to make advances to employees. These advances are then repaid to him.
On one occasion he "requested" that an advance to an employee be repaid to him direct. What documentation, if any, was used in these transactions? By what instruments did Dr. Ramsammy cause an employee's money to be repaid to him, the minister, direct? We don't need the Integrity Commission to deem this a conflict of interest. Working hard for a small salary is the lot of most public servants.

7. The greater danger of the Minister's fencing appears quickly when he makes a similar defence of the Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Khan who apparently sold his own furniture to the hospital without tender, apparently acting as a law unto himself. He too made the same mistake about a car allowance. The Health Ministry seems to be suffering from an epidemic of financial errors.

8. "Mr. Khan did an excellent job", we are told; the force of his offence is reduced. If a Minister makes such an excuse for himself and then for the CEO of a Corporation, where will it end? The dollar numbers in this case as we know them so far are not large, but the culture revealed is shivering. How are we to know how large numbers are treated? Surely the same culture prevails in relation to big numbers. What we are seeing here is the domestication of a public office, treating a public institution like the boss's private business or big house. Many modern firms will not tolerate what has been done in the Ministry of Health. In this atmosphere, there are no rules that have to be observed. In some Ministries it is the will of Freedom House that prevails and gives guidance about right and wrong. This is one of the abuses we railed against the PNC for, supported as we thought by the present rulers. In some state institutions like the Forestry Commission, it is the will of the Party as determined or expressed by the Head of the Presidential Secretariat, on the basis of democratic centralism. It allows abuse without limit of public trust and of the public assets.

I agree with the Minister on one point, the now pointless absence of the PNC/R from the parliament. I do not know whether they are receiving their salaries. I know that their absence from their posts allows and feeds government smugness about their right of use and abuse of their powers. The only recorded checks on their actions come from a minority of three opposition members. These members have finally been able to get questions answered and get the executive to make interesting admissions in some of those answers. It was an answer to MP Rupert Roopnaraine on consultants in the PEIP, which revealed the harvest reaped by VIKAB from the funds of the PEIP. MP Sheila Holder has got admissions, in place of former denials of food shortage in region eight. But the PNC was absent when MP Backer's motion on police conduct was finally placed on the order paper. Yet police misconduct has fuelled armed retaliation against police personnel .MP Trotman's series of questions on the law books contract, it appears, could not be asked and so could not be answered. And it seems that the bauxite industry, under the guidance of a sportsman like Mr Neil Kumar, Chairman of the Berbice company, is on its own, without either a state paper or a debate sparked by the main opposition party.

The PNC's explanations of its boycott are as weak as Dr. Ramsammy's. The Public Affairs Committee does not deal with current matters but with audited national accounts of past years. WPA MPs have always fought for the rule that any member may rise after prayers and speak on any topic for a minute or two. Our MP moved such a motion during the 1985-1992 Parliament. How useful it can be to all sides at this time! I am disappointed in Dr. Ramsammy's behaviour.

True, the PNC is guilty of serious negligence of the public interest in staying out of parliament on this long holiday. By the same token, Dr. Ramsammy's exploitation of the absence of the watchdog should at least qualify him and the other official for close investigation of what their industry caused them to overlook.