Remember back in April when it was revealed that there was some political corruption in the “Decent Housing” project at a ministerial level (of course it was never talked about again), well this time there seems to be a bit of corruption at the parliamentarian level.
Is it just me or does this multi-billion dollar project looking more like a carcass ripe with maggots and circling vultures overhead?
You would think that after the first case people would know better. Don’t they know that this is a royal initiative and that even a whiff of impropriety is image-tarnishing? (hint. hint.)
But here’s a more important question: is it possible to have a political system where in the very least, any one seeking public office has to avail themselves from their business dealings? The same business dealings they can influence by being in a position of political power? Can we at least have them, I don’t know, put their money in a blind trust or something? Can we ban members of parliament (especially) from being able to still have a second job while receiving pay for “serving the public”?
Can we have that?
Is this too much to ask?
Politicians, everywhere, look for an opportunity to make money, and it’s only the law that prevents them from doing so. religious and social values don’t really count that much because they view taxpayers money as their own and they want to take the biggest share of it before the thief next door takes away from them. As long as our laws are not enforeced, and in most cases they are not, don’t count on trusting politicians. Only the law will stop them.
after reading the links and the previous post, I have been thinking and I thought I would share the thoughts;
when you have a public construction project, it should have an End User within the public sector who will be in charge of the project’s administration after hand over ( say for example, constructing buildings for the civil defense, public libraries, public hospitals .. etc ) and this end user allocates the budget for the project, hence the question, who is the end user in the case of ” عيش كريم “, i.e who is paying for consultancy fees, project management & the current contractors? I didn’t get the part where it said there are housing investors who get shares !! the government is giving the land plots, is it putting tax money too? or are there investors?
handling of supervision of the construction process & the management of such a project, should be in my opinion, GAM not (مؤسسة التطوير Ùˆ الاسكان الØضري), hence all the problems will keep popping up, the project should have been tendered formally through the Procurement and Contracting Directorate in GAM & GAM should review the project drawings, tender documents, cost, payments, issue necessary NOCs, building permits, and do the testing and commissioning of all services before hand over. if there is no one to inspect, how would you know that there is no cheating on site or that the contractors are really fixing materials according to spex? if the end user, consultant and the contractor is the government.. shu dal? what a joke.
now in the current case, who is supervising & who will be handed the project after completion? and who will make sure there will be fair distribution on people who really need, who will handle the payments process from tenants ?