Awesa: K50m for roads was hijacked

By Grace Auka Salmang

A TOTAL of K50 million allocated in the 2010 supplementary budget for Lae City roads was hijacked and used without the involvement and knowledge of the Department of Works, says Minister Francis Awesa.

Mr Awesa revealed this last week, saying that although the money was allocated to the department, an audit of the department showed that it was hijacked and used for other purposes.

In a statement, he said 12 contracts were awarded for a total sum of K104,302,198.85, more than double the allocated amount.

He said the national Government has spent well over K280 million up to now.

“All contracts were executed under certificate of expediency arrangements, which means that they were not competitively tendered for,” Mr Awesa said.

“Our audit indicates there was mismanagement of the contracts in both their design and construction and financial aspects of the project.”

He said no detailed scope of works, technical drawings, standard works specifications for the preparation of road base and construction of concrete pavement slabs, quality control management plan, environment management plan or traffic management plan were provided to the contractors. 

He said these are the most basic requirements and standard practice for road construction.

“This seriously delayed the completion of contracts and seriously impacted on the quality of the finished concrete roads,” he said. “It possibly caused the major blowout in budgeted expenditure which was only supposed to be K50 million. Worst of all, the condition of Lae's roads remain one year later as if there was no work at all undertaken on them.

“Our audit findings point to collusion and corruptive manipulation between state agencies and outside parties that border on gross corruption.”

He said this is a shame and a disgrace and a clear indication of wastage of public money on a grand scale.

In the meantime, the department’s audit team has recommended an inquiry into the whole affair and the Government is taking up that recommendation, Mr Awesa said.

The Minister said six contracts have now been awarded for stage two of the project. Four contracts, each for 20km covering different sections of Lae roads, were awarded earlier and the final two were awarded last week.

Source: Post Courier 29/10/2013