Raphael John-Lall

Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is in­sist­ing there are pro­cure­ment rules and pro­ce­dures in State en­ter­pris­es. He was tak­ing is­sue with Ca­roni East MP, Dr Tim Gopeesingh who con­tends that there are no such rules. Im­bert al­so used the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) to make the point that the Gov­ern­ment ad­heres to rules and reg­u­la­tions. These ob­ser­va­tions came yes­ter­day dur­ing de­bate of the amend­ment to the Fi­nance Bill in Par­lia­ment. He points the fin­ger at Gopeesingh al­leg­ing that Par­lia­ment does not have the au­thor­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate or mon­i­tor Gov­ern­ment Min­istries or de­part­ments. "The mem­ber for Ca­roni East would have the Par­lia­ment and pub­lic be­lieve that these State en­ter­pris­es have no rules and no pro­ce­dures... and they are not bound by any­body. As far I am con­cerned it is a gross mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the facts," he said.

Im­bert, in a not so veiled ref­er­ence to Ude­cott, said the in­volve­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie in this case proves the point that the Gov­ern­ment fol­lows rules. "The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion that Op­po­si­tion mem­bers are scream­ing about: the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with the state en­ter­prise sec­tor is be­cause there are rules. "If there were no rules then there would be no rea­son for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Prime Min­is­ter to get in­volved in the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. "Why would they be get­ting in­volved and be tak­ing ac­tion in the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion? It is be­cause of rules, the Gov­ern­ment is deal­ing with a cur­rent mat­ter in a par­tic­u­lar way," he said.

Im­bert re­ferred to a doc­u­ment from the Min­istry of Fi­nance which he said out­lines all rules and pro­ce­dures that Gov­ern­ment fol­lows. "The Min­istry of Fi­nance In­vest­ment Di­vi­sion in June 2005 pub­lished a doc­u­ment called the Stan­dard Pro­cure­ment Pro­ce­dure for the Ac­qui­si­tion of Goods, Ser­vices to be pro­vid­ed and Works to be Un­der­tak­en in State En­ter­pris­es and Statu­to­ry Bod­ies com­mon­ly known as State agen­cies. "And Gopeesingh is well aware of this doc­u­ment and these are the stan­dard pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures be­ing used by State en­ter­pris­es," he said.