OCG Gets 100% Compliance from Government Bodies for 2nd Consecutive Quarter

The Office of the Contractor General (OCG) has reported an unprecedented 100% compliance rate for the second consecutive quarter running, by the Government’s procuring bodies submitting Quarterly Contract Award (QCA) Reports.
In a release today (August 10), the OCG said that all 196 Public Bodies, whose contract award activities are currently being monitored by the OCG, were declared fully compliant in filing their 2009 2nd Quarter QCA Reports by the stipulated August 3 deadline. This is in keeping with the requirements of the OCG’s Zero Tolerance Policy.
In May, the OCG announced that, for the first time since its Zero Tolerance Policy was introduced in October 2006, all procuring public bodies had submitted their 2009 First Quarter QCA Reports within the prescribed timelines.
Contractor General, Greg Christie, once again, publicly commended Public Sector Heads for their record and unprecedented achievement:
“The pervasive culture which previously existed, whereby the formal requisitions of the OCG were substantially ignored, is now a thing of the past. The country’s Permanent Secretaries and the Heads of all relevant State Agencies have succeeded in attaining an unparalleled level of discipline in conforming to the official requirements of the OCG,” Mr. Christie said.
“While there is considerable work left to be done to insulate public contracting in Jamaica from acts of impropriety and irregularity, and to ensure that the taxpayer gets value for his money, the accomplishments of these public servants must be viewed as a very promising and positive development and, accordingly, should not go without public acknowledgement or commendation,” Mr. Christie said.
QCA Reports are required to be filed with the OCG within one month after the ending of each quarter.
The Reports are specifically structured to force the disclosure of the material particulars of certain contracts, which have been awarded by Public Bodies. They are also designed to disclose whether and to what extent a Procuring Public Body has breached the Government’s Procurement Procedures.
The QCA Report regime was conceived and implemented in May 2006 by the Contractor General, as a major plank of his strategic plan to secure a marked improvement in probity and transparency in the Government’s contract award process.
The initiative has enabled the OCG to obtain and to make public the particulars of the Government’s contract awards that are reported on QCA forms.
Currently, the QCA particulars of 28,735 Government contracts which were awarded between May 1, 2006 and June 30, and which range from $250,000 to $10 million in value, can be freely examined and scrutinised by any member of the public on the OCG’s website at www.ocg.gov.jm. The data is updated each quarter.
The particulars of the Government’s contract award recommendations which have been endorsed by the National Contracts Commission during the period of June 1- June 30, 2009, and which value in excess of $4 Million (and in excess of $10 million since October 2008), are also available for scrutiny on the OCG’s website. This data is updated on a monthly basis.