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You are here: Home / Government Contracting News / Federal contractors failing to pay Afghan subcontractors, IG finds

July 15, 2013 By AMK

Federal contractors failing to pay Afghan subcontractors, IG finds

U.S. contractors in war-torn Afghanistan have repeatedly failed to pay their subcontractors, prompting strikes, work stoppages and death threats at a time when U.S. forces are preparing to withdraw, a key inspector general warned on Thursday.

In an alert letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and regional diplomats, John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said that nearly a quarter — 183 out of 753 — of complaints to SIGAR’s hotline from 2009 through October 2012 were about Afghan prime contractor and subcontractor nonpayment issues. As a result, he said, his auditors have opened 52 investigations encompassing $69 million in payments owed. An additional 44 such complaints have been filed with the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Defense Department’s inspectors general over the past six years.

Missed payments have resulted in the delay of projects “promoting the stability of Afghanistan,” a belief among Afghan workers that the lapsed payments are the fault of the U.S. government, a threat by one subcontractor to set himself on fire in front of the U.S. embassy, and one threat to blow up a compound of U.S. contractors and government agencies, the letter said.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2013/06/federal-contractors-failing-pay-afghan-subcontractors-ig-finds/65261/?oref=govexec_today_nl 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Afghanistan, contract payments, DoD, federal contracting, IG, subcontracting

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