Al-Rawi: Fraud found in regional corporations

Rural Development and Local Government Minister Faris Al-Rawi has said significant fraud has been uncovered during his ministry’s digitisation of the regional corporations.

Speaking during the budget debate in the House of Representatives on October 8, Al-Rawi said, “We have discovered a significant amount of fraud in one regional corporation in particular, which is not controlled by a government entity.

"Once you are able to track personnel with expenditure and approval, bearing in mind everything is done under the public procurement law, then you are able to tighten up waste, mismanagement and leakage through corruption and inefficiencies.

“I can’t say too much more about the aspects of corruption, as there are laws against tipping-off, but I can tell you that police intervention will be and is involved in some of these matters.”

He said while not every allegation was necessarily true, such was why government brought forward the whistleblower protection laws.

Al-Rawi said the ministry had hired 138 young professionals to digitise the corporations, moving money from the corporations to the ministry to hire them.

“This year, as you see the Sharepoint platform come alive, where you see the same document regardless of where they are, where the submission is instantly spotted, where you know whose desk it’s sitting on, and therefore whether it’s red, yellow or green light – it is only in those circumstances people will be able to say their work is going on and where it is.”

Al-Rawi said the ministry had launched a robust digitisation effort, including a local app through which it could receive a geo-pin, identification and picture of problems.

“We saw over 500 reports of people in impoverished conditions asking for latrine eradication. We were able to double up the money for latrine eradication and apply into this year so we can bring people into decency.”

He said there were five new items in the ministry’s budget. These were the municipal security surveillance eyes everywhere plan, the municipal flood-mitigation plan, the digital transformation of the 14 municipal corporations, the youth community model farm programme and the refurbishment work on the current annexe.

Al-Rawi said since he had been in the ministry, 500 people had joined the municipal police, with 164 in training. He said in total, there were roughly 1,000, with another 250 behind that. He said the municipal police academy also trained litter wardens and praedial larceny officers.

He said the ministry had developed a mulch-production system to reuse the trees and grass cut and collected by the ministry, CEPEP and other entities. He said it could be sold for $40 or $80 a bag, making the ministry a revenue-earner, as well as engaging transport services.

The minister said there would be a rush during the upcoming financial year as the regional corporations continued over 800 projects begun in the last fiscal year.

Al-Rawi said the ministry’s allocation was $8 million less than for the previous year, including the revised estimates.

He said after local government elections in 2023, each regional corporation had to carry out a re-prioritisation exercise for projects, and during that financial year, the regulations for projects under $1 million had to be ironed out and the procurement depository populated.

“This year you will see the performance has been materially impacted by the change in projects when new councils came in and in the public procurement law which was passed, which says you must have confirmation for funds and a person coming from the procurement depository.

"This means performance has dropped from the year before.

“The allocation we got last year allowed us to have in the works 1,255 projects, of which 445 were completed, with 810 ongoing. These projects are in-works or shovel-ready, and therefore you will see a very fast expenditure.

"We are now over the hurdles of the public procurement difficulties, which in my view have hampered – and understandably so – the performance indices of this unique ministry.”

Al-Rawi said the 445 projects employed 4,924 people and affected 207,347 people. He said the employment figure was to be added to the almost 30,000 people directly employed by the corporations, including through CEPEP (10,000), 2,200 in the Forestry Division, and 9,000-13,000 daily-rated workers. He said the vast amount of funds went to wages and salaries.

He said the Privy Council said the legislative reform package could only apply to prospective councils and unless the law was amended, certain provisions under that law could not be implemented.

Al-Rawi said the legislation proposed the creation of 14 semi-autonomous expenses and the ministry would have to replicate what head office looked like by 14.

“There will be replication of positions, as head office will not be performing certain functions of management. The organisational structure has been built out and this has to be submitted to Cabinet for its estimations as how it can roll out for the full proclamation.”

Al-Rawi said the corporations and the ministry had carried out significant work over the last year.

“We maintained over 3.9 million in grounds and parks maintenance; 120.7 million metres of roads and verge repair; drains and bridges repair, 915,182 metres; cleaning of drains, cutting of verges and bagging of garbage, we did 66.3 million metres; over 2.83 million open trays costing over $371 million; 145,421 commercial open-tray compacting at a cost of $60 million, for a total of $410 million in scavenging alone. We baited 600,000 points for rodent control and distributed 9.3 million gallons of water distribution.”

He said 2,480 households benefited from the national reforestation programme.