Afra Ray­mond

An im­por­tant is­sue seems to be emerg­ing at the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd (EF­CL), the State-owned com­pa­ny in­volved in the build­ing and main­te­nance of schools.EF­CL us­es pub­lic mon­ey in its func­tions, so it is im­por­tant to put these points now.Our coun­try has a high lev­el of white-col­lar crime-bribery, cor­rup­tion, fraud, over-billing, "back-fit­ting," tax-eva­sion, as­set-strip­ping and so on. White col­lar crime is a growth in­dus­try, since the re­wards are very high, while the risk of be­ing caught or pun­ished is ex­treme­ly re­mote.Due to the size of the State, a great deal of that white col­lar crime can be found in state in­sti­tu­tions. Once pub­lic mon­ey is be­ing spent, we must de­mand a high stan­dard of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy.There needs to be an ap­pro­pri­ate bal­ance be­tween the long-es­tab­lished "Right of pri­va­cy" in com­mer­cial trans­ac­tions and the grow­ing "Right to know" which is part of the emerg­ing so­cial or­der.In doubt­ful cas­es, the right of the pub­lic to in­for­ma­tion should pre­vail, since we are the ones pay­ing the costs-that po­si­tion forms part of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.

In ear­ly 2009 the then PNM gov­ern­ment tried to amend the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act (IPLA) so that peo­ple re­port­ing breach­es of that Act would have been forced to give their names and ad­dress­es. That pro­pos­al would have giv­en even greater pro­tec­tion to cor­rupt of­fi­cials, since vir­tu­al­ly no one would want to make a re­port. Of course peo­ple are strong­ly en­cour­aged to re­port crimes like rape, rob­bery, mur­der and so on-even anony­mous re­ports via 800-TIPS, for ex­am­ple. Those pro­pos­als, which were pi­lot­ed by then at­tor­ney gen­er­al, Brid­get An­nisette-George, were strong­ly op­posed in the Par­lia­ment and in the wider so­ci­ety, even­tu­al­ly be­ing with­drawn. One of the strongest pro­test­ers in the Par­lia­men­tary de­bate was Dr Tim Gopeesingh, who ac­cused the then gov­ern­ment of try­ing to in­tim­i­date peo­ple in­to not mak­ing re­ports.

Fa­cil­i­tat­ing whis­tle-blow­ers

The nor­mal good gov­er­nance pro­vi­sions for an­nu­al ac­counts, board meet­ings, min­utes and so on are very im­por­tant. But those pro­vi­sions must be sup­ple­ment­ed by an at­mos­phere and a se­ries of in­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments which fa­cil­i­tate whis­tle-blow­ers.

With­out the as­sis­tance of whis­tle-blow­ers, we would not have known of the Pi­ar­co Air­port or Ude­cott fi­as­cos and some­body leaked the file on the Heights of Gua­napo Church just pri­or to last year's elec­tion. The JCC has been ac­tive with its part­ners-TTMA, the Cham­ber of Com­merce and the Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute-in mak­ing pub­lic pro­cure­ment pro­pos­als to the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee. An im­por­tant el­e­ment of those pro­pos­als is the cre­ation of prop­er chan­nels for whis­tle-blow­ers.

I re­cent­ly re­ceived a copy of some EF­CL doc­u­ments, which were stat­ed to be their new Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty Pol­i­cy State­ment and a Staff Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty Agree­ment for the sig­na­ture of em­ploy­ees. I was al­so told, sep­a­rate­ly, that EF­CL staff are be­ing re­quired to sign that agree­ment, un­der threat of dis­missal. What is more, the agree­ment con­tains a spe­cif­ic clause which for­bids rev­e­la­tion of ei­ther the ex­is­tence or the terms of that agree­ment.If those doc­u­ments are gen­uine, there are se­ri­ous grounds for con­cern, so I made an e-mail query:

Hel­lo Paul,

I am re­li­ably in­formed that EF­CL staff were re­cent­ly di­rect­ed to sign a "Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty Agree­ment,"the ra­tio­nale be­ing that it is the new com­pa­ny pol­i­cy.Be­fore tak­ing this any fur­ther, I am re­quest­ing your writ­ten re­sponse to these ques­tions:

• Is there a new EF­CL on­fi­den­tial­i­ty pol­i­cy?

• When did that come in­to ef­fect?

• Would you please pro­vide a copy of that pol­i­cy?

As­sum­ing a new con­fi­den­tial­i­ty pol­i­cy is in place, these are my queries:

• Was that pol­i­cy ap­proved by the Board of Di­rec­tors?

• Is the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion aware of this new pol­i­cy?

• I would ap­pre­ci­ate a time­ly re­sponse.

With best wish­es,

Afra Ray­mond

That e-mail was al­so copied, pure­ly for in­for­ma­tion, to the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. At the time of writ­ing, there was no ac­knowl­edg­ment or re­ply.This is a se­ri­ous de­vel­op­ment for these rea­sons:

Staff were un­able to ob­tain any ad­vice, which is a breach of good labour re­la­tions, at the very least.The uni­lat­er­al im­po­si­tion does vi­o­lence to the prop­er mean­ing of the word "Agree­ment."The "Guid­ing Prin­ci­ples" re­fer to "priv­i­leged in­for­ma­tion" and "EF­CL's right to pri­va­cy," both of which de­tract from greater trans­paren­cy and im­proved pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures.

This ad­min­is­tra­tion promised, both on the cam­paign trail and post-elec­tion, to make new pub­lic pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion a pri­or­i­ty. The Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment was chaired by Dr Tim Gopeesingh, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. EF­CL is the prin­ci­pal state en­ter­prise with­in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, so what is Dr Gopeesingh's po­si­tion on all this? Is this tak­ing place with Dr Gopeesingh's knowl­edge and/or ap­proval?This kind of sneaky re­stric­tion on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of staff be­com­ing whis­tle-blow­ers is in­com­pat­i­ble with the high-pro­file pub­lic state­ments of sup­port for a new, ef­fec­tive pub­lic pro­cure­ment sys­tem-see ei­ther page 18 of or nu­mer­ous speech­es by the present Prime Min­is­ter Ex­pen­di­ture of pub­lic mon­ey – ac­count­abil­i­ty – trans­paren­cy = COR­RUP­TION.