Permanent Secretaries Instructed to Enforce Contractor Deadlines, Impose Penalties for Delays
By| Marvin Cato | HGP Nightly News|
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA — Permanent Secretaries across all Government ministries, regions, and departments have been instructed to tighten the management of public contracts and to impose financial penalties on contractors who fail to deliver goods and services on time, the Senior Minister with Responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh, said.
The new directives follow a high-level meeting convened last week by President Irfaan Ali with Permanent Secretaries, Regional Executive Officers, other accounting officers, and members of Cabinet. According to Dr. Singh, the President made it clear that he expects the strictest standards of public accountability to be observed across all arms of the Government.
A Focus on Contract Management
Dr. Singh said he later convened a follow-up meeting with all Permanent Secretaries, on the President’s instruction, to discuss tighter contract management.
“By tighter contract management, I refer to the processes around managing and overseeing the execution of government contracts with providers of goods and services to government,” Dr. Singh said.
He said the new instructions cover three key areas:
- That goods and services are delivered on time
- That they meet the quality specified in the contract
- That delivery is in line with the broader terms of the agreement
“Every contract has a timeline — or a deadline — by which the goods and services being contracted to be supplied will be supplied,” Dr. Singh said. “President Ali’s instructions are very clear: those contracted timelines must be honoured.”
Liquidated Damages
Where contractors fail to meet deadlines, Permanent Secretaries have been instructed to impose liquidated damages — financial penalties built into government contracts that apply when a contractor fails to deliver within the agreed timeframe.
Permanent Secretaries have also been told that it is their direct responsibility to ensure that performance bonds — financial guarantees provided by contractors as a condition of doing business with the Government — remain in place and do not lapse or expire.
“Providers incur a financial penalty where they fail to deliver the goods and services that they’re contracted to deliver, within the timeline that they were contracted to deliver those goods and services,” Dr. Singh said.
Part of a Wider Reform Effort
Dr. Singh said the new contract-management instructions form part of a broader set of measures being pursued by the Government to improve the quality of service delivered to citizens.
The announcement comes against a backdrop of active public debate over the timeliness and quality of public-sector project delivery in Guyana. Opposition parliamentarians and civic figures have, in recent months, raised concerns about delayed drainage maintenance, the responsiveness of state agencies during flooding events, the condition of school infrastructure during the rainy season, contractor selection processes, and value-for-money questions across major infrastructure spending.
The Office of the Auditor-General and the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) are the principal external oversight bodies for public procurement in Guyana, alongside the Public Procurement Commission. The Government’s new contract-management directives operate within this broader institutional architecture.
Opposition Has Not Yet Responded
The opposition had not, at the time of publication, issued a public response to the new contract-management directives.
Opposition figures interviewed in connection with other infrastructure and service-delivery stories in recent weeks have argued that contractor accountability and value-for-money have been long-standing concerns in Guyana, and have called for more consistent enforcement of contract terms — a position broadly consistent with the direction of the new directives, though the opposition is likely to evaluate the announcement against the question of implementation rather than the announcement itself.
