The Story within the Story…By Leonard Gildarie“Ours is a government of liberty,Wholesale Stitched Jerseys, by, through and under the law. No man is above it, and no man is below it.” – US President Theodore RooseveltPowerful words indeed.Laws are what make the world more bearable. Without them,Cheap Jerseys Free Shipping, there would be chaos. Laws are simplyLeonard Gildarierules that bind all people living in a community. Laws protect our general safety, and ensure our rights as citizens against abuses by other people, by organizations, and by the government itself. We have laws to help provide for our general safety. These exist at the local, state and national levels.In Guyana, there are laws about food safety, how we licence our doctors and lawyers and engineers, and even speed limits and traffic regulations for when you are driving.We have rules governing how we grant concessions like our forests and mining lands to investors – both local and foreign.More importantly, for me, we have laws that govern how our public officials should behave in office. How they spend our monies. How they account for it.There are procurement policies to follow, to ensure not only do we get the best value for our dollar,China NFL Jerseys, but also that our citizens and others receive a fair chance of participating in the state projects.It is to the latter that I want to speak about today.We cannot continue to run our country in the manner it was allowed to be run in the last decade. The apparent good life was one big bubble that had to burst sometime. We were moving money in a highly irregular manner, from one area to the next, to temporarily fix problems that appeared. There was little regard for accountability and transparency.The current housing slump is one example of how one entity, flush with money and lands, pushed a programme that went into a downward spiral within the last two years.We ran out of lands and we allowed contractors to rape it with little scrutiny to what we paid them.The roads are falling apart in many of the schemes and roads are too narrow.Today, under a new management and Government, it has been found that little thought went into the hundreds of acres that went to private developers who just could not deliver on their commitments.Now today, more than 20,000 applications for house lots and homes are on the files of the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA), while large swaths of East Bank Demerara lands remain vacant.Where was the authority and its oversight responsibilities to ensure that contractors and developers kept their word? Where is it now?We have many cases of these…from the Guyana Forestry Commission, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission and National Frequency Monitoring Unit. I would not even dare talk about what is happening at the Neighbourhood Democratic Councils and the Regional Democratic Councils.What the police force was allowed to descend into will continue to live with us for awhile. The crime situation is but one example. We have police ranks who believe that being a traffic cop is the best place to be,Cheap Jerseys Outlet, because of the benefits.The situation with RUSAL, Demerara Timbers and BaiShanLin should never have happened had we been paying attention and following regulations.On Thursday, the Auditor General released his report on 2015 spending by Government.The Auditor General,China Cheap Jerseys, Deodat Sharma, complained that most of his recommendations to improve accountability over the years have been ignored. Specifically, Sharma said that only a small percentage of that which was recommended in 2014 was fully implemented.”Each year, my office issues recommendations to Ministries, Departments and Regions that are designed at improving systems and practices at these entities and improving the government’s governance and accountability mechanisms.”Sharma said that 379 recommendations were made in his 2014 Audit Report. He said that he and his team reviewed each recommendation to determine what action, if any, was taken by the respective Accounting Officers.Sharma said that to his disappointment, at the time of reporting, 115 recommendations which represent 29 percent of his overall recommendations were partially implemented, while 223 representing 56 percent were not implemented.“Overall, I am concerned with the lack of action towards the implementation of these recommendations; since,Cheap Jerseys Online, 56 percent of the recommendations have not yet been implemented.”In addition, Sharma said that in many instances, recommendations are repeated each year without appropriate action and as a result, weaknes