Juffa: Abide by procedures

 By MOUA OMOA

NORTHERN Governor Gary Juffa has warned public servants engaged to work for the province or for line agencies to abide by laws and procedures. 

He said that after the discovery of K5 million roadwork fraud in the Ivijitari electorate in the province.

Juffa described it as an effort to deny the people of Northern of funds for road works and other infrastructure work. 

He said proper procedures and processes established to ensure transparency, good governance and quality work were clearly avoided by the Provincial Tenders Board and a politician in the awarding of a contract to a subsidiary of a logging firm operating in the province.

Juffa has since put a stop to the process until inquiries are conducted and has instructed the Works Department to cease processing the project and revert to the proper processes and procedures in line with stipulated Finance Management Act and Instructions.

“I am very disgusted at this effort to divert K5 million through suspicious circumstances where all normal processes and procedures were  obviously avoided in the pretext of doing road works,” he said.

“Two submissions for funding were made, each were flawed because the first contained documentation to suggest that K5 million be awarded to a subsidiary of a logging firm with no due diligence and there is no scope of works, no company profile, no details of the engineers or workers, and no history of the company and whether it was experienced or what work it had done.

“The second set contained two sets of project documentation divided into K2.5 million each, perhaps because the K5 million can only be signed by the finance secretary but was signed by the chairman of the Provincial Tenders Board. 

“Furthermore, a review of the set of documentation revealed several anomalies.

“For instance, it was addressed to the Southern Highlands administrator when the roadwork was supposed to be in Northern. It was signed by someone who was not the Works Secretary but claimed to be and the cover letter asked for work to begin on the “bridge” when in fact it was roadwork.”

Juffa said he was even more 

agitated when contacted by a politician claiming that the project was “his” and demanding that he release the project documentation and when he refused, the MP claimed he would get another set of documentation made and proceed. 

He has written to the Works minister and the secretary demanding that the matter be investigated.

Juffa also insisted that the Works Manager Northern be dealt with or removed if he was going to facilitate such acts of fraud and that the money not be paid to the company until proper processes and procedures were followed and the provincial executive council had endorsed it.