Lucrative KBR Contracts (in Iraq) Unaffected by Troop Drawdown

[tekisui]

Source: IPS

WASHINGTON, Apr 7, 2010 (IPS) - Only one in nine hours billed by a contractor for running the giant military bases that house U.S. soldiers in Iraq in the first half of 2009 was for actual physical labour, according to new testimony by the Pentagon's auditors.

The company - KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton - is tasked with military logistics such as menial tasks like cleaning toilets, cooking food and driving trucks.

Between January and July 2009 "over 1.1 million hours (including overtime) had been charged to the government, yet only 116,000 hours of documented repair work had been conducted," Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the director of the Defence Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), told a hearing on Capitol Hill.

Starting in September 2002, tens of thousands of KBR workers - mostly from South and Southeast Asia - were kept busy building bases initially in the Kuwaiti desert and then eventually in Iraq. At its peak, in August 2007, the U.S. military had some 162,000 soldiers stationed in Iraq and an equal number of contractors to support them from KBR as well as from a variety of other companies like Blackwater and Dyncorp.

Over the last year, troops have been slowly leaving Iraq as part of a withdrawal plan created by the Barack Obama administration. The number of troops is now roughly 98,000 but by the time U.S. combat missions in Iraq end in August, the U.S. plans to draw down to between 35,000 to 50,000 troops in that country.

Given the planned drawdown, the Pentagon told KBR to reduce its staffing levels all across Iraq last year. KBR came up with a proposal implemented in August that was ineffective because the positions that the contractor eliminated were vacant.

KBR was "eliminating spaces without faces", Commissioner Charles Tiefer remarked during a hearing of the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting held in the U.S Senate on Mar. 29. The commission was created early 2008 to investigate waste, fraud and abuse in military contracting services in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead, the Houston-based company maintained a steady staff level 20 months after the military reduced the number of soldiers on the ground from 160,000 in January 2008 to 130,000 in September 2009, the DCAA audit said.

While the Pentagon allows contractors to have extra staff on hand, it recommends that the "labour utilitisation" rate should be 85 percent.

Altogether KBR has 48,998 employees in Iraq, including direct hires and subcontractors, according to company spokesperson Heather Browne. It reported revenues of 4.8 billion dollars from its Iraq military contracts last year.

more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50954

[pocoloco]

1. The "I" of "MIC"

[mvccd1000]

2. Empty positions...

Having spent more time than most in Iraq, I generally agree with the article's premise. I did have one point of contention, though:

The article states: "Given the planned drawdown, the Pentagon told KBR to reduce its staffing levels all across Iraq last year. KBR came up with a proposal implemented in August that was ineffective because the positions that the contractor eliminated were vacant.

KBR was "eliminating spaces without faces", Commissioner Charles Tiefer remarked..."

Based on my time in Iraq (not with KBR), I'd say that makes sense. My employer already knows, for example, that we're going to have a drawdown on June 1st. Rather than keep our manning at the contract-required 90%, we're letting it slip down in the 75-80% range. That way, on June 1, we can simply deactivate all of those empty positions.

The alternative is to keep hiring new employees to stay at 90+%, and on June 1st we turn around and send many of them back home.

How would you feel if you accepted a job overseas, moved out of your apartment, rented out your house, put your belongings in storage, and then went over there only to be sent home two months later.... and then found out the company KNEW they were only going to keep you for two months?

That's a shitty way to treat someone... I don't know how KBR does it, but on the tiny contract I'm involved with we try very hard not to do that to anyone. I suppose on June 1, someone can say we cheated the government by only eliminating empty positions, but the counterpoint to that is that we let the positions empty out now, through voluntary attrition, rather than by forced layoff on June 1st.

In the end, we gave up some hours we could have billed, the government saved some money by not having bodies to pay between now and June, and we didn't have lay off anybody who didn't want to leave.

I have a hard time seeing the downside to eliminating vacant positions.