Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

An Op­po­si­tion MP has warned Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Bev­er­ly Khan to watch out as she could be the “next Jai­wantie Ram­dass” af­ter Khan’s Pro­cure­ment Re­port not­ed non-com­pli­ance with pro­cure­ment law by some front­line min­istries to se­lec­tive ten­der­ing of con­tracts val­ued over $1.2 bil­lion.

Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein in­di­cat­ed this at Mon­day’s UNC meet­ing. Ho­sein de­mand­ed the pro­cure­ment process for the se­lec­tion of the per­son who’s re­design­ing T&T’s Coat of Arms and whom he al­leged was hand-se­lect­ed.

Af­ter the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor’s first an­nu­al re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, Ho­sein said Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Khan not­ed in the re­port that the lev­el of pre­pared­ness for the trans­for­ma­tive changes brought on by full procla­ma­tion of the Pro­cure­ment Act was gross­ly in­ad­e­quate.

“I want to tell Ms Khan watch out! She could be the next Jai­wantie Ram­dass. They might pelt she out of the of­fice!” Ho­sein added.

Ram­dass is the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al who is at odds with of­fi­cials from the Fi­nance Min­istry over T&T’s ac­counts for 2023.

Ho­sein said the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor’s re­port is telling and has se­ri­ous mat­ters in it.

“The re­port cit­ed the min­istries which were not com­ply­ing with the law in terms of pub­li­ca­tion of con­tracts. First is the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Tourism Min­istry, the En­er­gy Min­istry, the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter!” he added.

Ho­sein said the re­port stat­ed the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor al­so voiced “great con­cern” about a sig­nif­i­cant overuse of non-com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment meth­ods con­trary to the act’s ob­jec­tives.

“That means that’s sole se­lect, which means ‘you see you fel­la, ah giv­ing you the con­tract’. It’s hand­pick­ing their friends, fam­i­ly and fi­nanciers,” Ho­sein added.

“For 2023 to 2024, the first quar­ter - 70 per cent of the con­tracts were hand se­lect­ed. For quar­ter two, 87.3 per cent. Quar­ter three - 51 per cent. Quar­ter four - 78 per cent.”

Ho­sein said the re­port stat­ed the val­ue of the con­tracts with re­spect to se­lec­tive ten­der­ing was over $1.2 bil­lion.

He al­leged, “They’ve now hand se­lect­ed a par­tic­u­lar per­son to re­design the Coat of Arms. I’m not at­tack­ing any in­di­vid­ual but there’s law to de­ter­mine how we hire per­sons and there must be a process - so what was the process to re­tain this per­son? We cast no as­per­sion on the per­son but we call in­to ques­tion the process for her ap­point­ment. There was no pro­cure­ment for that...it was a hand picked per­son, Gov­ern­ment must an­swer.”