KUWAIT: MP Saadoun Hammad announced yesterday that he plans to question in the Assembly Minister of Public Works and Electricity and Water Abdulaziz Al-Ibrahim over alleged irregularities and scrapping the contracts of key projects. Hammad told reporters that the minister recently scrapped the contracts for four new hospitals out of favour for a businessman close to him, adding that he will name the businessman during the grilling.
The minister last week said he had ordered the scrapping of the four hospital projects because of their high cost and in order to safeguard public funds. But Hammad claimed that the actual motive for the minister's action was because a company of a particular businessman close to the minister did not win any of the four contracts. The lawmaker charged that the minister has effectively obstructed the implementation of the development plan, especially that the four hospitals are mentioned by name in the plan.
He said the minister sought the assistance of a committee from outside the ministry to evaluate the contracts and that some members of the committee have problems with one of the four companies that won the contracts, adding that the companies won the contracts after offering the lowest price. The lawmaker also accused the government of favouring big businessmen and the business community, especially in distributing land plots for industrial use, and vowed that he will "open this file" during the next parliamentary term starting Oct 29. The minister has been under fire from a number of MPs who either threatened to grill him in the Assembly or called on the prime minister to dismiss him before the start of the parliamentary term next Tuesday.
In other business, the government and a parliamentary team entrusted to determine the Assembly's priorities for the new term yesterday reviewed the most important issues that must be discussed during the eight-month term. Head of the team Ali Al-Omair said the government, represented by planning minister Rola Dashti, presented 24 issues they insisted were the most important that needed to be debated during the term. The issues include amendments to the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) law, amending the Audit Bureau law and others.
Omair and Dashti also said that another meeting will be held on Sunday to discuss the exact dates to debate the issues in the Assembly. The lawmaker however said that the government has not presented to the team any plan on how the government is planning to resolve the housing problem, which most MPs want to make the top issue in the next term.
© Kuwait Times 2013
