Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Bev­er­ly Khan says whistle­blow­ers are com­ing for­ward and her of­fice has re­ceived over 60 re­ports linked to bribery, cor­rup­tion and bid-rig­ging in its first year of op­er­a­tion.

Khan made the com­ment in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at her Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day.

“We re­ceived com­plaints, we have re­ceived just over 60. We go through a process of screen­ing and as­sess­ing what is told to us to move for­ward. You don’t want the plat­form to be used as a tool for vic­tim­is­ing peo­ple,” Khan said.

“Right now we have sev­en ac­tive cas­es, we have closed 53 of them. We have eight mat­ters that we are in­ves­ti­gat­ing that are await­ing in­for­ma­tion.”

She said while on­ly a frac­tion of com­plaints made via the whistle­blow­ing plat­form are now be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed, she re­mained con­cerned about the coun­try’s pro­cure­ment prac­tices.

Khan de­scribed some of the com­plaints raised by the re­dress mech­a­nisms as shock­ing.

“Re­ports of cor­rup­tion, re­ports of bid rig­ging come through, re­ports of tak­ing bribes, per­sons tak­ing bribes from con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers. If you keep get­ting re­ports on a par­tic­u­lar en­ti­ty or per­son, that may cause the OPR to stop and say we need to take a clos­er look at this,” Khan re­vealed.

“I be­came sur­prised when I learnt of the al­le­ga­tions. Ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings is an­oth­er one that comes up of­ten. Those we are able to as­sess and see if there are breach­es of the act and then we have the op­tion to au­dit or go to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. We have tak­en the route of go­ing to in­ves­ti­ga­tions but very soon we will be em­bark­ing on the au­dit pro­gramme as well.”

Khan said as pub­lic con­fi­dence in the OPR de­vel­ops, she ex­pects more to come for­ward.

“In the case of gov­ern­ment min­istries, what you see a lot of is, be­cause the lev­el of un­der­stand­ing is not where it should be and knowl­edge of the act, I think it is more the sup­port­ing agen­cies. Among all pub­lic bod­ies, what you have is a sit­u­a­tion where we have as­sessed the pub­lic bod­ies, which ones deal with high-risk, high-val­ue pro­cure­ments, be­cause that is where we need to fo­cus our ef­forts in terms of scru­ti­n­is­ing what they do, right now, we just try­ing to get peo­ple to re­port and re­port ac­cu­rate­ly.”

Khan al­so flagged gov­ern­ment min­istries, two of which had failed to pro­vide a his­to­ry of their con­tract re­port­ing over the last year. The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty was among the of­fend­ers.

“It is con­cern­ing, the is­sue of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, those are ob­jects of the act. The act re­quires that we present the da­ta so the pub­lic can scru­ti­nise how pub­lic monies have been spent. It is not for the OPR’s ben­e­fit, it is for the Par­lia­ment and the pub­lic by ex­ten­sion, that is what is con­cern­ing.”

How­ev­er, Khan said she was op­ti­mistic of a shift from an over re­liance on non-com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment prac­tices, or what is al­so known as sole source pro­cure­ment, where­by on­ly one sup­pli­er pro­vides a com­mod­i­ty or ser­vice.

“We are un­learn­ing the old, I think it will change. A lot of peo­ple tell me what the act has in it and the reg­u­la­tions, it is too oner­ous. I want to say it should nev­er be too oner­ous to do the right thing.”

The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Prop­er­ty Act was ful­ly pro­claimed on April 26, 2023. It caused the re­peal of the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act, which had led to a pletho­ra of is­sues such as ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy; long end-to-end time­lines, and an ex­treme­ly com­plex pub­lic pro­cure­ment process with­in the gov­ern­ment and pub­lic bod­ies.

The cur­rent act is aimed at re­form­ing the pro­cure­ment laws of T&T, in keep­ing with the prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance, such as ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, in­tegri­ty and val­ue for mon­ey.

On Mon­day, the re­port on the per­for­mance of the in­de­pen­dent body un­der the act was laid in Par­lia­ment.

In it, Khan not­ed that “while the tran­si­tion to the new regime was nev­er ex­pect­ed to be seam­less, the last year has shown that pub­lic bod­ies were not ad­e­quate­ly equipped to take the reins of these new reg­u­la­to­ry mech­a­nisms.”

Khan ex­plained that the tran­si­tion to the new regime has seen an un­sat­is­fac­to­ry lev­el of com­pli­ance by pub­lic bod­ies to the leg­is­la­tion.