Dear Editor – As one of the senior citizen of Honiara city, I did continue to follow through the various happenings surrounding the operations of HCC under the leadership of the outgoing mayor until to date.
First of all, I would like to thank my friend Aloden John for raising this same issue in the Solomon Star newspaper on your publication yesterday.
Anyway, I wish to venture into a number of issues that the citizens of Honiara city still unconvinced of and were still eagerly waiting for much more concrete and honest clarifications from those who were implicated on the matter of unexplained wealth.
Of course, it had become public knowledge that photographs and names of home owners who were current and former employees of HCC were exposed via newspapers branded as owners of multimillion dollar palaces.
Whilst five of them were exposed, I gave credit to a HCC women employer residing at Vura 1 for her very shallow and unconvincing defensive statements in reply to media statements on the issue. Her defensive statements were mainly based on the family land but miserably failed to honestly inform the Honiara city residence on her sources of funding to build the home.
I must strongly put across to her that anybody within Honiara city can legally own a piece of land but the way an expensive home was built on the land needs to be answered.
Should there be a home loan made within one of the financial institution in the country then say so and provide necessary documentation to clear off your name.
Coming on to the other three (3) that owned wealthy homes, I am totally surprised that they all chose to remain silent hoping that the issue will may soon die out as what is now happening.
Again, as a senior citizen of Honiara city. I will not want to see the matter vanish and herewith strongly call for thorough police and audit investigation into the matter. Otherwise, I also wish to strongly urge the three others to come out via media and publicly explain to the citizens of Honiara city your source of incomes that were used to build such wealthy homes.
On a separate note, the issue of the HCC preferred supply contracts is still seen to me as an unsolved puzzle.
The councillor for Cruz ward and owner of DODS suppliers come out via media and defended DODS supplier as one of the four or five preferred suppliers as endorsed by HCC.
She even went further and inform the Honiara city residents that her business interest were declared with the leadership code commission. The chairperson of LCC did confirm the declaration which was well and good.
As food for thought, I wish to stress to her that any national leader whether be a politician or a senior public servant, or a junior public servant must declare their business interest with the leadership code commission.
The points of clarification pertaining DODS suppliers is not more on the leadership but on the receipt of payments from HCC finance division that clearly showed that there were favours or kick back interests within the system from the superiors.
Why was DODS supplier awarded with two consecutive payments’ (morning and evening) on two occasion? The captain or CEO of HCC then was the fired city clerk. Any payment that left the door of the CEO must be authorised and signed by the city clerk. Had there been collusion and kickbacks between the then city clerk and the owner of DODS supplier for the matter at the expense of other divisions who may desperately require payments to sustain their services to the city? U FALA NAO SA VE!!!!
As exposed by the media, DODS supplier scooped more than 1 million dollars from HCC for the various supplier services. As for transparency and accountability purposes, I would urge the chairman and the secretary of the HCC tender board to inform the Honiara city residence of the names of the other four HCC preferred suppliers. Especially so, the residents within Honiara city would also want to know if those other four preferred did receive the same treatments as enjoyed by DODS supplier. Furthermore, the chairman and secretary of the HCC tender board must also publish the number of supply contracted to the other four preferred suppliers and publish the amount of money received by the four other preferred supplier the same period when DODS suppliers scooped more then 1 million dollars.
The exposing of these information’s will determined whether the prioritizing of payments to DODS supplier is not amounted to fraudulent and nepotism as obvious in the HCC dealings when it comes to giving of contracts and tenders.
In conclusion, I would not want to see all these issues of unexplained wealth and suppliers contracts awards within the HCC to die out and be left as water under the bridge.
I herewith strongly call upon our regularity authorities including JANUS, office of the AUDITOR GENERAL and the CID of the police department to step up and dig deep in your investigation and enough with all the nonsense.
John Kai
Honiara
