Deleting contractors: Plummeting standards or hide and seek statutes,
guilds?
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By Nimi Mweta
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SCARCELY a tenth of newspaper readers can usually make head and tail out
of frequent reports of deletion of contractors by the Contractors
Registration Board (CRB). allied with the Engineers Registration Board
(ERB). There is usually a lot to be heard from the former each quarter of
the year while little is heard of the latter, whereas in actual fact it is
the latter which affirms professional status, while the former seems to
confer business status. The question is the content of deletion of
contractors, whether it is simply business status, moral and ethical status
or all.
Were it that the deletion of contractors that is perhaps a bit pompously
announced over the airwaves and newspaper front pages was ‘the real thing,’
this country would have a few foreign contractors still on the job, and not
much else. Only recently, CRB Registrar Eng. Boniface Muhegi said that this
year the board deleted 752 contractors for failure to adhere to stipulated
regulations, while others sought deletion on their own accord. The deleted
contractors are spread throughout the country, in which case the board was
seeking to launch an awareness campaign.
As the board was saying that there are slightly over 3,000 registered
contractors, that is close to a quarter of them failing to do their work
properly, and that is way above industry standards. Is it possible that one
quarter of all dispensaries are fit to close any one time, one quarter of
all private schools, one quarter of all churches are unfit to worship, or
one quarter of mosques have no water supply? Except in rare cases, most
registered facilities have what is takes to conduct commerce, in which case
the key is unlikely to relate to minimum standards but optimal criteria.
That raises two issues, as to whether those deletions are as effective as
they appear to be when they are put up on the airwaves and newspaper pages,
and if there are doubts about that, why such rituals seem to be necessary
for the Ministry of Works and the Contractors Registration Board. Is it
because it is a pinprick which can at times pose problems for those
concerned, especially in audit work if a wrongful tender is given out? But
why do so many contractors seem relaxed as to deletions?
These are questions which come up when one examines the regular
announcements of deletion of contractors and the reasons thereof, which
takes the image of the mythical ‘seven headed hydra,’ a cousin of the more
familiar octopus, where two heads spring up for each head that is cut down.
That would pose serious logistical risks for those charged with cutting off
heads of Hydras and Medusas, that their thankless task promises no end, as
new ‘fake’ contractors come up each passing day, using this or that trick
to get registered, and snaking out of inspection.
There is a usual saying that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, in
which case one has to wonder if the country is really awash with fake
contractors, much fewer fake engineers as it appears. The proof in this
case would be in the quality of their works, for instance the manner in
which a building collapsed in the heart of Dar es
Salaam a year or so ago, and it was plain that substandard materials were
used, and that didn’t require a qualified contractor to take notice. What
really is the problem?
In certain regards, when one can solve a problem about a specific building
query and finds out the cause, there is plenty of chance that such an
explanation applies elsewhere, in which case it is to such explanation that
one trains a ‘beam of light’ of deletion of contractors to see if it is the
solution. The reason a beam of light is helpful is that it reveals the
colors contained in a beam of light, eliminating its fictitious colourless
or ‘white’ status, taken ombinus, and erroneously. Was it not evident
that the contractor was an accomplice, not the cause of the huge mishap?
That is where the whole story about deleting contractors unravels, and also
the persistent resurfacing of contractors to be deleted while it is rare
enough to hear that an engineer has been deleted. When such an event
occurs, the reason would be fake certificates or dubious institutions in
which a qualification was said to have been earned, and not the quality of
work noticed in a particular peoject. In that case when contractors are
deleted, what is rubbed out of register is the company, an association of
individuals with a certain amount of capital, equipment, office…
If such association is struck off register, it means that the specific
individuals who make it up can no longer seek work, that is, tender, for
any activity on the basis of that association. They would have to join
other individuals for a different sort of link, with a new name and
particulars, presumably as consultants or shareholders. This then becomes
a new entity irrespective of the presence of an individual whose former
operational entity was struck off register for suspected malpractices, etc.
There is hence a likelihood that similar risks would be taken in the new
place of abode or association, especially if it paid huge dividends the
last time it was carried out. It is possible the previous company was paid
billions of shillings excessively with regard to a particular work for
instance on account of delays, if its explanation was ‘sweet’ enough for
district authorities to comprehend, or Tanroads for that matter. At the
same time, district authorities and other bodies need these associations of
engineers to facilitate dubious dealings and then blame them for shoddy
work done; the ministry obliges by deleting them, and everyone is happy.
It means that contractors earn millions of shillings in association with
those who employ them in a particular project, and it is their work to take
the blame and suffer the supposed humiliation of being deleted, meanwhile
as they work overnight to create as mant contracting firms as possible, by
hiring out where necessary, what it takes to have a company registered. It
is usually the case for plenty of other organisations: take a memorandum of
understanding belonging to a kindred company or organisation, fill up the
relevant names, pay a fee, register it.
Were it an academic issue, one could set out to measure the extent of
corruption in the road building sector as well as in the construction of
government buildings like schools and health centres by the number of
contractual firms coming up and the numbers of deletions. When average life
of a contracting company which has never been deleted is taken as a maxim,
it is possible to know how many times a specific engineer may appear on the
scene in the guise of a different contractor, whether in a prime or
secondary capacity in relation to a project. Then the total number of such
appearances in a year serves to show how many contractors get away with it.
Still it is important to remember that contractors are merely facilitating
the work design of someone else, the one commissioning a piece of work, as
a contractor is essentially a consultant about how best to go about the
work. The person actually building is the owner of the building or road
what is at issue, as such a person can dictate terms, in so far as when he
accepts the finished work the matter ends there. In that sense, contractors
please their direct employers at the project level, usually.
This is the point that is often skipped by the ritual hoorays over the
deletion of contractors, that this is a whipping bag for the sort of things
that are directed or commandeered by those in authority over the project.
It is sort of communal get together and at the end someone has to be
blamed. Everyone will be tight lipped.
So the speed with which contracting companies are deleted is in sum a
mirror of the number of unacceptable shoddy projects and payments, whose
only requiem was the rather harmless announcement of deletion of a
contractor. And as the CRB insisted in its recent statement on deletion of
hundreds of contractors, it will have to send information in various
regions and districts over the deleted contractors, making it appear as if
life was going to be hell for them, that they will get no work whatsoever,
after district authorities have been cautioned. It doesn’t work that way.
In sum, accountability about shoddy work is not realised at all because
hundreds of contracting firms have been deleted from the register, as
hundreds more will be registered in the course of the year, often the same
under a different guise. Since a contractor offering his CV does not have
to state all his work experience, queries that came up here or there, a
deleted company is a non.issue for his work, as he can always say there
were logistical problems leading to the failure to pay annual fees, etc. No
one will follow up on what a contractor did in a different company earlier.
Hence the deletion of hundreds of contractors almost each year is more or
less a circus, that it disturbs no one in particular, as it is a routine
disturbance to change offices, logo and associates, so that the trace of an
earlier offence or misdemeanor is more or less erased. As the notice was
imputing, certain firms had themselves asked to be de-registered, aware
that it is just a matter of filing in legal papers at BRELA or somewhere to
form another company, and no one there remembers anyone else. And even if
names are on a databank, no action was ever taken on an individual but on a
legal personality which is the company; the issue ended there.
(ends)