On the evening of May 8, Minister of Housing Neville Wisdom telephoned The Tribune to assure a reporter that transparency was of the “utmost importance” to him and “to his colleagues” and that a list of building contracts awarded by his Ministry would he delivered to our offices the next morning.
His call to The Tribune was made after contractors protested that there had been unfairness in the Ministry’s awarding of contracts. The complaints went back to a time before Mr Wisdom had taken over the Housing portfolio from Minister Shane Gibson. According to the disgruntled contractors a disproportionate number of contracts were being awarded to a favoured few. As a result of their complaints, The Tribune contacted the Ministry to find out if there were any valid grounds to their complaints.
As usual our reporters were given the runaround by the Ministry, until Minister Wisdom came into focus offering, as a “servant of the people,” to answer the people’s questions.
He said he was having an “exhaustive” list compiled that would be a testament to his Ministry’s commitment to transparency.
At about 7 o’clock on Monday evening, May 8, he telephoned the reporter who was asking the questions. He said the list was ready to be picked up by our messenger. As we had no messenger at that hour, and it was already past our deadline, we said we would have it collected first thing Tuesday morning. He said that that was fine by him.
On Tuesday morning, the reporter called the Ministry’s secretary to say that our messenger was on the way to pick up the envelope left by Mr Wisdom. She said a messenger was not necessary, the documents had already been sent and would he at our offices in half an hour.
Hours passed. No documents. Another call was made to the Ministry to find out where the documents had been sent. This time we were told that the documents would not be sent. They would not be available. The minister, we were told, would call The Tribune when he got out of Cabinet.
When the Minister eventually came on the phone that evening, he denied that a list had been sent from his office to The Tribune that day. That was obvious as no documents had arrived. However, he assured us that as soon as his Ministry was able to provide the relevant information, it would do so quickly.
“There is so much information that we will need time to compile it.” he said, apparently forgetting that the day before he had told us that the information had already been compiled and was ready and waiting to be collected.
“We are not trying to give the wrong information, so it is being compiled as best as we can, and when we are ready and we are able to, we will provide it to you,” he again promised.
We don’t doubt that he didn’t want to give out wrong information. But what was obvious was that he didn’t want to give out any information at all. Because of this dodging, the public is justified in believing that something is being hidden, and that some contractors probably have a justifiable complaint.
Now five months later, contractors are still complaining, and tenants have joined in their complaint about the quality of the product that the Ministry expects them to call “home.”
And so The Tribune is back with its request for information. We are asking for the same information that we requested in writing early in May – “a list of all persons and companies awarded contracts under the Ministry of Housing to build and develop housing subdivisions, roadways, or any other project in New Providence and Grand Bahama.”
“We are looking specifically for names of contractors and the amounts awarded to each since the PLP took office in May, 2002,” said our reporter’s letter to Mr Wisdom.
This time The Tribune has no plan to drop the issue. We are amazed at the attitude of a government that boasts so loudly about openness and accountability.
No government minister, elected by the people, whose salaries are paid by the people, who are answerable and can be fired by the people, has any right not to keep the people informed of how they are managing the people’s business.
What is going on behind closed doors is not private contracts using private funds. It is the people’s business using taxpayers’ dollars. These men, who call themselves ministers, are employees, who are duty bound to give an accounting to their employers when they are requested to do so.
A group of citizens has asked The Tribune on their behalf to get an accounting of how their business is being managed by their employees. So far we have been unsuccessful. However, we intend to daily publish our request to the Minister. It is then for the people to decide how long they intend to tolerate such arrogance from their elected representatives.
Editorial from The Tribune
