A report of the Audit Bureau for the past five years revealed negligence in monitoring and implementing maintenance and cleaning contracts by government agencies, which incurred additional sums of money from public funds as a result of change orders.
The report, a copy of which is obtained by a local Arabic daily, comes as part of an initiative by the Audit Bureau aimed at reforming the government agencies covered that fall under its oversight, since there are a number of irregularities in the implementation of the terms of these contracts, despite the disbursement of money that were requested for implementation.
The report criticized the existence of shortcomings and negligence in following up and supervising contracts and the weak ability of the supervisors to implement them, in addition to the failure of the authorities to conduct integrated technical studies, which put a burden on the public budget.
The report indicated that 5.148 million dinars were approved for maintenance and cleaning contracts for ministries and government departments during the fiscal 2016-2017 and 2020-2021, of which the actual expenditure was 3/674 million dinars.
The report indicated that the appropriation for maintenance contracts during that period was 4,813,000 dinars, while the actual disbursement was 3,380,000 dinars.
According to the report, there are sums of money spent on cleaning and maintenance contracts whose results were not of the required level, as the optimal use of those allocated amounts was not made, and the implementation of those contracts was marred by defects and shortcomings that resulted in many observations and violations recorded by the Bureau in its reports during the aforementioned period.
The Bureau stressed the need to fix the existing defect, pointing to the weakness of the technical ability and experience of the supervisors to implement maintenance and cleaning contracts in the entities covered by the oversight, which resulted in negligence and failure to follow up the implementation of the works of those contracts and to verify the contractors’ performance of the contract works according to the contractual conditions and the required efficiency.
The report pointed out that some parties did not conduct integrated technical studies to determine the detailed specifications necessary for maintenance work when preparing the tender document, which resulted in many breaches after implementation and the public money incurring additional amounts in exchange for change orders.
The report also shed light on deficiencies in the work of rehabilitating companies specialized in maintenance and cleaning works in the entities and it was also found that there was a breach of the tight control in some entities on the implementation and operation of maintenance work, which resulted in the lack of effective and integrated benefit from some maintenance contracts, which was evident in the automated systems that manual operation is replaced by it, due to weak control over contracting, supply, installation and operation procedures.
The report indicated that many devices were broken down in some of the entities covered by the oversight for not carrying out the necessary maintenance procedures for them, which resulted in many technical, security and service breaches associated with them.
The report pointed out that there are sham works in some of the contracts covered by the control that the contractors contracted with did not implement them, which reflects the shortcomings in the work of supervision and control over them.
The report highlighted six recommendations
— Excluding contractors who are not qualified to carry out the works
— Selection of people with experience, competence
— Conducting studies to determine business specifications before contracting to reduce variation orders
— Tightening internal control over maintenance work and raising the effectiveness of supervision over it
— Checking requirements and specifications of devices and equipment before contracting
— Reducing the extension of maintenance contracts for long periods and offering them to public tenders
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