allAfrica.com: Cameroon: How Contractors Cheat The People (Page 1 of 1)

Contractors have more than one arrow in their arc in attempts to cheat.

If it has been said that drunks spoiled the value of alcohol and all the good intentions alcohol was meant for, so can it be said that contractors have turned into a nightmare, all good intentions of government to bring development closer to the people through the use of contractors.

Government is an impalpable entity. Something or somebody that nobody can really physically hold down. The only thing we know about government is when things don't work or when they work well. Why can government not do this why can it not do that. Government has promised us this or that ? And when government is really seen to be at work, it is through local agents ordinary people can see and touch. Some these agent are contractors. A very noble profession indeed ; taken from a common-level definition of what is expected of them : that is, translating into concrete reality, what the intractable government organisation is expected to be. By devolving some of its developmental activities to contractors, government simply wanted to make its presence physically felt in the myriad of facets of developmental challenges it has in improving the lives of ordinary citizens. But what does the Cameroonian contractor today consider to be his role? Most of them think that their role is to make money from government contracts. They fail to identify with the developmental objectives of government.

Across the national triangle - from Kousseri in the Far-North to Kyie-Ossi in the South or from Ndelele in the East to Eyumojock in the Extreme Western part of Cameroon, hundreds and hundreds of contractors are at work to transform government's developmental commitments into concrete reality. But rather than use these golden opportunities offered by government to contribute in the effort to get our country out of c backwardness, contractors have rather found in this exercise, a good opportunity to make quick money. To reap where they never sew at the expense of the people.

In the atmosphere of generalised impunity (Operation Epervier has only recently come into the scene!), several contractors have ignored rules and regulations; to the extent that contractors generally ignore all the conditionalities prescribed in tender documents. They operate as if laws did not exist. In this cacophonic atmosphere, in which the toughest rogues get their way, the victims have been ordinary citizens: those in dire need of basic educational, health and transportation infrastructure.

An irate Ephraim Inoni, Prime Minister of the Republic, stirred the hornet's nest in a circular letter of a highly-strident tone last Friday April 18, 2008 when he observed that in spite of measures taken to put order in the area of public contracts, several reprehensible practices and a poor functioning system were still to much present, hindering the attainment of desired results.

Diagnosis

The PM's diagnosis identified several shortcomings least of which are not, among others the generalised indiscipline of project owners, vote holders or tenders' boards in carrying out their duties.

According to the Prime Minister's circular, the situation is characterised, inter-alia, by the inexistence or poor quality of feasibility studies which inevitably lead to erroneous attributions of budgetary allocutions; poor conception of tender documents which later lead to annulments and protests by tenderers due to the non-respect of official deadlines; the fractioning of contracts to run for several years whereas the same contract could have run far one budgetary year; the systematic non-publication of tenders in the Journal of Public Tenders; the abusive rejection of tenders on grounds linked to the absence of some administrative documents attributable to tenderers; the late Constitution of sub-commissions set up to analyse tenders after the opening of rich tenders the exceeding of the 30 day limit within which such analyse must be made; the abusive introduction of new criteria which were not initially in the tender document; the non-transmission of tenders to the Public Tenders Regulatory Board as statutory required etc. The list of recriminations, highlighted by the Prime Minister is long. About 20 in all.

As by the tone of the Head of Government, the desire is that all actors respect existing texts. For, if contractors are not delivering as expected, it is largely due to the complacency of project owners. And by Project Owners, we mean those in the interface between government and those expected to execute contracts. It is because of the complacency of these Project Owners that so many people are able to cheat government and, in the process, hold down developmental efforts.

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