Sean Nero

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald says gov­ern­ment is not back­ing down from its de­ci­sion to amend the Pro­cure­ment Bill brought to Par­lia­ment by the for­mer Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment be­cause it was flawed.Fur­ther, she said the Act was not ful­ly pro­claimed.

Speak­ing at the T&T Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) Con­trac­tor of the Year Awards and Din­ner held at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on La­dy Young Road in St Ann's, Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day, she said while the Kei­th Row­ley-led ad­min­is­tra­tion was aware of con­cerns raised by the fra­ter­ni­ty on learn­ing of Cab­i­net's in­tent to amend the law, re­forms were ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary.

Last Fri­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion has been for­ward­ed to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment for scruti­ny and ex­pects a re­port by Jan­u­ary 22, 2016.

Im­bert said the JSC will then ex­am­ine the pol­i­cy and mer­its of the leg­is­la­tion and pro­ce­dures for ap­prov­ing a pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor to see if it made sense and was in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try.

"Our in­ten­tion is to amend and seek to re­form and make changes which we con­sid­er es­sen­tial. Our over­rid­ing rea­son is that the Act fails the ex­pec­ta­tion of the peo­ple. Mem­bers of your as­so­ci­a­tion may have held and many in­deed still hold the view that there is leg­is­la­tion in place and notwith­stand­ing our reser­va­tions, we should make them work. Our po­si­tion has been clear. There are fun­da­men­tal short com­ings in the Act.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Act did not en­gage the trust of the pop­u­la­tion and the be­lief that it would tack­le most griev­ous is­sues con­se­quent up­on the ab­sence of good pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion. Fur­ther, it was on­ly par­tial­ly pro­claimed," Mc­Don­ald told the au­di­ence of con­trac­tors.

The min­is­ter cit­ed that the Act in its present form did not pro­tect the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor from po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence. Fur­ther, she said, the of­fice hold­er had to be as­signed greater in­de­pen­dent pow­ers sim­i­lar to the Of­fice of the Con­trac­tor Gen­er­al in Ja­maica.

Re­fer­ring to the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment 2015 cam­paign man­i­festo, Mc Don­ald said the par­ty, in its bid to win back the gov­ern­ment, said it would have im­ple­ment­ed leg­is­la­tion that was mod­ern, trans­par­ent and fair.

The gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion, she said, was due to the clear short­com­ings in the Act, which had the po­ten­tial "to com­pro­mise the ef­fec­tive­ness of the Act.

"In this re­gard, we have on­ly yes­ter­day (Fri­day) de­clared our in­ten­tion to re­view the Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act to de­ter­mine the ap­pro­pri­ate amend­ments and to bring the nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion in the short­est pos­si­ble time. You will prob­a­bly al­so re­call that a draft in­ter­nal con­trol frame­work for pub­lic pro­cure­ment in T&T was de­vel­oped by the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with a num­ber of stake­hold­er agen­cies. The draft frame­work is await­ing Cab­i­net ap­proval."

Hall of Fame In­ductees

Justin Paul

Small Con­struc­tion:

Parks In­ter­na­tion­al

Spe­cial­i­ty Con­struc­tion:

Trinidad Con­trac­tors Lim­it­ed

Civ­il Con­struc­tion:

Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors

Build­ing Con­struc­tion:

NH In­ter­na­tion­al