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Blacklist companies, not just punish corrupt officials – Saleh Al Shaibany 1

Saleh Al Shaibany

Blacklist companies, not just punish corrupt officials –

Sunday Beat – Times of Oman – March 16, 2014

Saleh Al Shaibany

http://www.timesofoman.com/News/Article-31123.aspx

RELATED STORIES 

  Sunday Beat: Oman   needs strict laws to combat corruption

  Sunday Beat: The   corrupt should not escape the consequences

Real justice will not be done until companies whose senior   officials have been convicted on corruption charges are either blacklisted   for a number of years from bidding for the government tenders, or made to pay   heavy fines.

We should follow the regulations the rest of the world   does to make companies accountable for the actions of their employees   representing them.

The excuse that the board of directors cite by saying,   “we knew nothing about it”, does not wash when it is their job to   know about it. It defies logic when hundreds of thousands of rials disappear   in the company’s bank accounts and the chairman says “it escaped my   notice” or simply that “it was hidden from my view” and the   courts believe that statement. A CEO or a managing director will not   authorise the accountant to use the company’s money to bribe a government   official unless he has approval from someone in the board. There is always   that prior arrangement of “you go ahead with it but I will deny it if   you are caught” type of thing which means the bribe had the blessing   from the top.

For justice to go around a full 360 degrees instead of   doing a semi circle, the Oman Tender Board (OTB) must ban the bribing   companies for at least 10 years from any future activities. It is no excuse   that these companies, just because they employ hundreds of Omanis, should get   away with it. If they are allowed to bid again, then they should pay a fine   equivalent to the bid value of the contract in which they were accused of   offering bribe.

Otherwise, it will be morally wrong when one or two   employees, acting under certain instructions, should be made scapegoats for   something bigger than them without any consequences to the company   itself.

The shocking thing is that while the company is being   investigated for bribery charges, it is still in the running to win the next   contract of the project they had bid for prior to the court case. It is like   telling a school boy “don’t climb this tree again but you can climb the   other one at the back but make sure you don’t fall this time.”

Then there is a question of the auditing companies. How   does it escape their expert scrutiny when a large amount of cash was not   accountable for? If a company is listed in the Muscat Securities Market (MSM)   or in the case of a government organisation, surely the auditors must spot   any financial irregularities. If not, where are they looking?

To say that the financials are hidden from their full   scrutiny is again a lame excuse for not doing their job or simply taking for   granted that “all is well” when it is not, as we now find out. For   listed companies, it is the investors’ money that is used to bribe for   contracts where the board of directors are the trustees. It is not business   ethics, as one insider speculated. “Bribery money is the board of   directors’ way of increasing profits for their investors.”

What about the role of the State Financial and   Administrative Audit Institution when it comes to scrutinise the accounts of   the government’s organisations and their employees? We expect such an   institution with wide powers to put under the spotlight any financial   irregularity committed by officials, especially those at the very top, to act   decisively and timely to win the public’s confidence.

If we argue if we should make board of directors of   private companies responsible for their actions, then it makes perfect sense   to make heads of the ministries take responsibility for the spate of   corruption cases in their patches. If their response is that “we were   not aware of it”, then questions should be asked about their competence.   Somebody else should be appointed who will be “aware of it” when it   starts to happen again.

To sum it all up, corrupt companies should not simply   plead ignorance and blame it on their managers to survive to make money   another day. Similarly, heads of ministries cannot shrug their shoulders by   claiming lack of knowledge. It is part of their responsibility and the buck   stops with them. The time for cover-up has long passed. 

You can get in touch with the writer: saleh@timesofoman.com

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Brain drain could end up doing irreversible damage! By Saleh Al Shaibany Reply

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Saleh Al Shaibany

http://www.timesofoman.com/News/Article-28760.aspx  

Brain drain could end up doing irreversible damage

Sunday Beat – By Saleh Al Shaibany – Times of Oman – January 26th 2014

Muscat: The depressing reality is that Oman is beginning     to witness its human capital transferring to other countries for the simple     reason that the Sultanate cannot anymore satisfy the higher wages that its     skilled workers demand.

Talented local workers with years of experience are looking for better paid jobs abroad leaving the country in a brain drain zone. The gap they leave behind cannot be filled by graduates. The human flight can do an irreversible damage on a long-term basis if employers continue to pay low wages to its most experienced Omani staff.

And the problem is deeper than that. Oman is also losing its new talents as well for greener pastures.

With the government investing so much money in education and vocational training, the job opportunities need to match the  college and university leaving students’ expectations for wages. For the record, the Ministry of Finance has allocated OMR2.6 billion for education this year, twice the budget allocated for the same sector last year. The huge capital investment will need to translate into better paid jobs if we have to keep young talents right here at home.

Most of the Omanis who are leaving are emigrating to other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and the prime targets are the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. That means that we are losing professionals and skilled workers that the government has paid millions at different levels of training and education. The areas in which we now face the brain drain are in Information Technology (IT), medicine, the financial sector  and academia. In a fledgling economy like Oman, we cannot leave talent gaps and then hope that things will remain alright. Employers must match the wages paid by our neighbours instead of hoping that someone from abroad will fill these positions when Omanis vacate them. For that to happen, attitudes must also change.

Top on the list is trusting local skills. Oman has     become so dependent on importing talent and the mind set is now embedded deep among the employers that only foreign workers can do a better job.     These employers are now being proved pleasantly wrong. While we shun our own skills, the GCC states hold these in high esteem and companies there     start to poach Omani talents. So where does it leave the huge effort of the     government which is spending about OMR4 billion a year on projects, trade     subsidies and education to inject funds in the private sector? Yes, it does     create jobs but now Omanis want to be paid enough to compensate for their talents.

It took 40 years to create a powerhouse of local skills. The ammunition of that powerhouse is better financial packages. Omani managers know that they are worth much more across the border than here.

In the UAE or in Qatar, a senior IT manager with 10 to 15 years of experience gets a monthly package of around OMR7,000. Here, they only get paid about OMR3,500. New doctors get a maximum of OMR700 per month in the Sultanate. They would get paid about OMR2,500 when they land     jobs in those two countries. One would say it is not exactly patriotism to abandon one’s country in its moment of need but better standard of living     is what drives people these days.

The funny thing is that 20 years ago, Oman barely had any experienced and skilled people to work in the high profile jobs in the private sector. It was natural to import these talents from different countries to push the wheel of development forward. It is a different scenario now. We have the right people now but we are beginning to export local talents when it is mostly needed here. The trend is threatening to wipe out any advancement we made in the last two decades in the build up of skilled workforce.  The result, if we don’t watch out, is the loss of senior managers to foreign bidders and that will give the Omanisation process a severe knock.

It goes without saying that to continue to compete on the global basis, Oman must invest on its local workers by paying them much more than the present wage scales if it wants to retain its skills.

END

The Corrupt Should Not Escape The Consequences. Reply

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 Saleh Al Shaibany

The Corrupt Should Not Escape The Consequences.

Sunday Beat – Times of Oman – By Saleh Al Shaibany – saleh@timesofoman.com

MUSCAT: Take this example of a man who is paid about OMR2,000 a month, is driving an expensive car and owns a building that has 40 flats, 12 shops and a basement parking. Where did he acquire all this wealth from?

Oh, I almost forgot. He also owns a home at Jumeirah Beach in Dubai and a posh flat somewhere in Malaysia. Corruption seems to be deeply entrenched in our society. It is now like second nature in our lives. Yet, such officials or company employees have escaped detection of corruption for the last 40 years.

They have been amassing millions of rials of ill-gotten funds over the years and now they think getting kickbacks is part of the business deal. They also feel it is their divine right to pick the pockets of the government.

As one western oil executive once told me, “if you want to retire in Acapulco, be an official in the Omani energy sector.”

The question everybody asks is, why only now we see a series of corruption cases going to court? Is it because our oil wealth is starting to decline at the time when we have problems balancing the fiscal budget? Or is it that it is too widespread that ordinary people cannot tolerate anymore?

Investment prospects

Whatever the answer is, if corruption is not rooted out immediately, it will hurt our foreign investment prospects. At this rate, the Sultanate’s credibility as an investment destination will fare no better than the so-called banana republics.  The only way to stem it, is to punish the culprits by handing them long sentences. In the past, offenders of corruption in the isolated cases — we had seen — got away with lighter prison terms.

The well connected even escaped convictions. It is time they face the consequences of their greed. For justice to be served, perhaps, it is also time to make sure the corrupt are not probing the fellow corrupt. There is a club in our midst that protects each other.

The government also needs to make sure that companies, not just their officials, offering bribes do not get away with it. Such companies should be struck off from bidding future contracts, no matter how well connected they are.

If the court finds them excuses and they are allowed to bid again, the message will be out that it is alright to ‘reward’ government officials. Then we are not going anyway and these corruption court cases are just a lip service.

The second message, perhaps more devastating, will be to young people and future leaders that plundering the national wealth is part of the Omani way. They will learn that if you cannot have one hand in the government’s cash register then ‘you are not the man.’

It is happening this way. When you get 10 per cent from a bidding company, it does not come from their bank. They just make the government pay 10 per cent more so it can end up in your pocket. Corrupt officials have either been clever all these years or the probing team has been looking elsewhere when it comes to hiding the bribe money. It is stashed away in the accounts of their spouses, siblings or children. Sometimes even with closed friends. They are not foolish enough to do it here but in overseas accounts.

Then they move back to Oman to clean the money tainted with filth by buying that block of flats. Hang on; not in their names but in  names of their children. And here one wonders if our anti-money laundering laws have any teeth at all. Without any doubt we are in a danger of being embroiled in the whims and desires of crooked officials who know that they can find a safety net when they fall.

We are also living in a business environment of contracting companies, both local and international, which can tempt officials with a bag of cash without fear of being punished because their directors belong in the same fraternity club as the probing team.

The members of the public are waiting anxiously to see whether the current court cases of corruption can find anybody guilty, whether a bribing company or the receiving individuals.

And for that matter, if the probers could go deep enough to uncover more cases that stretch back for a number of years. We all know the current cases are just a tip of the iceberg of the scale of corruption the country is in.