Contractors in Afghanistan

[SHRED]

Contractors in Afghanistan Are Making Big Money for Bad Work
CorpWatch

Friday 06 October 2006

A highway that begins crumbling before it is finished. A school with a collapsed roof. A clinic with faulty plumbing. A farmers' cooperative that farmers can't use. Afghan police and military that, after training, are incapable of providing the most basic security. And contractors walking away with millions of dollars in aid money for the work. The Bush Administration touts the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan as a success story. Perhaps, in comparison to the violence-plagued efforts in Iraq and the incompetence-riddled efforts on the American Gulf Coast, everything is relative. A new report "Afghanistan, Inc.," issued by the non-profit organization CorpWatch, details the bungled reconstruction effort in Afghanistan.

Massive open-ended contracts have been granted without competitive bidding or with limited competition to many of the same politically connected corporations which are doing similar work in Iraq: Kellogg, Brown & Root (a subsidiary of Halliburton ), DynCorp, Blackwater, The Louis Berger Group, The Rendon Group and many more. Engineers, consultants, and mercenaries make as much as $1,000 a day, while the Afghans they employ make $5 per day.

These companies are pocketing millions, and leaving behind a people increasingly frustrated and angry with the results.

Instead of reprimanding these contractors for their poor work, USAID announced a new contract totalling $1.4 billion awarded to the joint venture of The Louis Berger Group, Inc. and Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp. on September 22.

More:
http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_43472.shtml


Report:
http://corpwatch.org/downloads/AfghanistanINCfinalsmall.pdf

[libodem]

1. I think they screen the help to make sure of their political

affiliations. They have to be Republican and have voted for Bush in the last election. Who needs more qualifications than that? I'm not kidding. Who would punish the faithful?

[eppur_se_muova]

2. CorpWatch.org -- thanks for that link. Their site looks interesting. nt