Entrepreneurs have time and again dragged the government to court for breach of contract as a result of the carelessness of bureaucrats charged with drafting government contacts.The Minister of Justice, Tharcisse Karugarama disclosed this, Tuesday while presiding over a workshop of Chief Budget Officers and directors of finance and administration organised by his ministry.“Some ministries have been sued… it is even worse in districts. If we go into arbitration, we will lose. We will get to a situation of paying people because of our carelessness on few clauses in the contracts.”He observed that some officials sign contract documents without understanding the consequences.“You are luring the government into losses as a result of your negligence in analyzing and signing pacts. We are having problems with almost all government contracts,” Karugarama, who is also the Attorney General, noted.“It’s like the government is not abiding by the terms stated in contracts and it’s always involved in lawsuits because people don’t take contractual obligations seriously”.He urged the budget officers, as people responsible for policy, to follow the laws that govern contracts to avoid putting the government in crises.Karugarama appealed to them to involve legal officers from start, to avoid such “unacceptable mistakes.”It is said that most institutions involve legal advisors after they are sued for not respecting the contacts.The Attorney General’s office has, among its attributions, vetting and giving legal counsel on government contracts.Karugarama called for transparency, competition and accountability in awarding contracts. “We are now getting early warning signs in which in the near future, if we don’t correct these mistakes, we will be in courts, arbitration centres or in disagreements with many people or companies because of the nature of contracts most of you sign without scrutinizing the risks the government will inherit. Each of us has a responsibility to protect this government,” he observed. Isabelle Kalihangabo, the Assistant Attorney General in charge of legal advisory service, said that poor preparation of tender documents, using wrong or forged procurement documents and awarding tenders to people with no skills and financial capacity, are some of the mistakes in many tenders.“Most of these lead to substandard work and wasteful expenditures,” Kalihangabo said.She added that some officials apply sanctions that are not prescribed by law, which, in most cases, the government is penalized if it is dragged to court.“We found many mistakes in these disciplinary procedures, and the government ends up incurring costs to compensate the victims due to these gross misconducts, sometimes handed by unauthorized personnel,” she said.Such mistakes, she observed, have led to delay in executing contracts, led to doing substandard work and corruption.“We have many cases in courts where the government was sued because it did not respect the contract implementation, sometimes, for not paying the contractor in time, and this leads the government to pay huge amounts of money,” she said.
