Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC), Fazir Khan, has re­spond­ed to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent state­ment that bil­lions have been spent on road­works with “hard­ly any good road to show”. He called for greater tech­ni­cal over­sight and the use of new­ly im­ple­ment­ed pro­cure­ment tools to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Khan ac­knowl­edged that road­works un­der­tak­en close to elec­tions have his­tor­i­cal­ly raised con­cerns about qual­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“While we know his­tor­i­cal­ly that road­works car­ried out just be­fore an elec­tion tend to be ques­tion­able, the JCC does not have the in­for­ma­tion at this time to make a blan­ket state­ment about val­ue for mon­ey re­gard­ing re­cent road con­tracts,” he said.

How­ev­er, Khan high­light­ed the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR), now op­er­a­tional, as a vi­tal mech­a­nism for trans­paren­cy and en­force­ment.

“Now that we have an ac­tive in­de­pen­dent OPR un­der the new pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, all these con­tracts would be sub­ject to the over­sight of the Reg­u­la­tor, and the in­for­ma­tion would be made pub­lic via their an­nu­al re­port,” he ex­plained.

He fur­ther en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to take ac­tion if they have ev­i­dence of mis­con­duct in pub­lic con­tract­ing.

“Should any en­ti­ty or per­son have spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing any such con­tract, an of­fi­cial com­plaint can be made to the OPR un­der Sec­tion 41 of the Act, by com­plet­ing their on­line form to ex­pe­dite their in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Khan said.

Khan al­so en­dorsed the Prime Min­is­ter’s call for road­works to un­der­go prop­er au­dit­ing and test­ing, and em­pha­sised that this process should be stan­dard for every con­tract. “The PM’s call for au­dit­ing and test­ing should be part of every road con­tract that is su­per­vised by in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tants on be­half of the em­ploy­er,” he said.

Dur­ing Thurs­day’s cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, the Prime Min­is­ter de­mand­ed full ac­count­abil­i­ty for the bil­lions spent on in­fra­struc­ture projects un­der the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture. She de­clared it a na­tion­al dis­grace that so many roads re­main in dis­re­pair.

‘It’s a shame that bil­lions of dol­lars, over $10 bil­lion, have been spent over the past nine years, yet we can hard­ly find a good road in the coun­try, and flood­ing re­mains ram­pant,’ the PM said yes­ter­day.

The JCC pres­i­dent out­lined the qual­i­ty as­sur­ance and con­trol (QA/QC) mea­sures that should be stan­dard prac­tice in road con­struc­tion, in­clud­ing ver­i­fi­ca­tion of as­phalt mix de­sign, mon­i­tor­ing of mix tem­per­a­ture on-site, field test­ing for com­paction in line with spec­i­fi­ca­tions, and core sam­pling to check pave­ment thick­ness.

‘Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this over­sight is lack­ing in many road projects, de­pend­ing on the ex­e­cut­ing en­ti­ty,’ Khan ob­served, not­ing a gap in the con­sis­tent en­force­ment of tech­ni­cal stan­dards.

The JCC Pres­i­dent al­so con­tend­ed that post-con­tract au­dit­ing is pos­si­ble “by cor­ing the laid as­phalt and oth­er lay­ers to de­ter­mine the com­paction and lay­er thick­ness ac­tu­al­ly laid, com­pared with the con­tract spec­i­fi­ca­tions.”

The JCC has ad­vo­cat­ed for trans­paren­cy and pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards in con­struc­tion and en­gi­neer­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in tax­pay­er-fund­ed projects.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Ro­han Sinanan, the for­mer Works Min­is­ter un­der the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, for a re­sponse to the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion. How­ev­er, all ef­forts were un­suc­cess­ful at the time of re­port­ing.