Tyrone Reid, Staff Reporter
THOUSANDS OF Govern-ment contracts are currently not being monitored by the Contractor General due to a serious shortage of manpower.
According to newly-appointed Contractor General, Greg Christie, it is worrying that the majority of Government contracts are not being monitored.
It is essential to monitor the award and implementation of these contracts to ensure impartiality.
The Contractor General, who is mandated to ensure the circumstances in which contracts are awarded or terminated did not involve impropriety or irregularity, is uncomfortable with the current level of transparency. "We are in the dark and we want to come into the light. We want to find out what is going on," he said yesterday.
Mr. Christie said, while there are procurement stipulations that must be adhered to, there continues to be the lack of independent scrutiny.
"They (Jamaicans) need to be concerned about it, and that's why we are taking steps to address it," said Mr. Christie, who took office on December 1, last year.
Mr. Christie is proposing that a tracking system be implemented to bring all relevant information about contracts valued under $4 million from the various Government agencies into a single repository on a monthly basis.
He lamented that his office had no clue about the number of contracts which missed independent scrutiny and monitoring over the years. "There are no systems in place for the previous Contractor General or even the Government to know how many ... the data is splintered around," he pointed out.
IMPOSSIBLE FEAT
Mr. Christie said there were currently only nine inspectors on his staff to monitor Government contracts islandwide, a feat he considered unfeasible.
"We can do so much and no more so we (randomly) choose the contracts that we are going to monitor," he added.
But Mr. Christie cautioned that even with the maximum staff complement, there was no way all contracts could be monitored from procurement stage to finished product.
He said his office, plagued by limited resources, was able to monitor 300 contracts from start to finish during 2005, some of which were NCC-endorsed.
