Geisha Kow­lessar

As the Sen­ate de­bates the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Bill, 2014 to­day, the pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il-so­ci­ety groups are call­ing on the pub­lic to join them in urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to have the bill passed be­fore Par­lia­ment is pro­rogued next month.Mak­ing the call was chair­man of the Pri­vate Sec­tor Civ­il So­ci­ety Group on Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Win­ston Ri­ley dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Nor­mandie Ho­tel, St Ann's.He said civ­il so­ci­ety had en­dorsed the bill with a few amend­ments to be im­ple­ment­ed as promised by the gov­ern­ment.

"That is, the whole ques­tion of a prop­er de­f­i­n­i­tion of a procur­ing en­ti­ty which does not con­fuse the is­sue of 'procur­ing en­ti­ty' with 'pub­lic body,' and a look again at the is­sue of dis­pos­al with­in the bill it­self."The third one has to do with the role of civ­il so­ci­ety in the bill it­self. What we want is a corps of peo­ple who have a di­rect in­ter­est in the whole ques­tion of pro­cure­ment and are able to give guid­ance to the is­sue of pro­cure­ment and the reg­u­la­tions," Ri­ley said.He said in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, civ­il so­ci­ety had been play­ing a greater role in gov­er­nance be­cause laws by them­selves did not en­sure good gov­er­nance."What en­sures good gov­er­nance is the ac­tiv­i­ty of the peo­ple with­in the so­ci­ety and if that can be en­trenched in the law, then I think we will go a long way in the whole is­sue of com­ing to terms with good gov­er­nance," Ri­ley added.

He said it was a tremen­dous achieve­ment that there was a bill be­fore the House which was laid in the Sen­ate last April 2."The biggest is­sue with the bill is that there was an ex­cep­tion clause, 7 (2), which al­lows all re­la­tion­ships be­tween our Gov­ern­ment and an­oth­er gov­ern­ment and al­so any re­la­tion­ship our gov­ern­ment has with fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions not to be sub­ject to the bill," Ri­ley said.He said there had been a re­ver­sal of that clause as man­dat­ed by Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie, which was wel­comed by the groups.Al­so in at­ten­dance were CEO of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Cather­ine Ku­mar; pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­Cham) Hugh Howard; pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try Afra Ray­mond and pres­i­dent of the T&T Lo­cal Con­tent Cham­ber (TTL­CO) Lennox Sir­jus­ingh.

Ray­mond, who al­so spoke, said the bill rep­re­sent­ed some 12 years of ef­fort and must not be­come an­oth­er Sec­tion 34."We worked very hard to get a sat­is­fac­to­ry bill. There are a cou­ple of small points which we still need to work out and once we get that done and hope­ful­ly we get it passed in Par­lia­ment, we then want the en­tire act en­act­ed."We do not want an­oth­er Sec­tion 34... first, last and nev­er again. We don't want the bill passed and then the sec­tion on pub­lic mon­ey is ex­clud­ed, or the bill passed and the sec­tion on reg­u­la­tors ex­clud­ed," Ray­mond stressed.