For­mer act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Bev­er­ly Khan is the new pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor.

The po­si­tion has been va­cant since Jan­u­ary 11, 2023, when the five-year term of Mooni­lal Lalchan, the pre­vi­ous pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor/chair of the pro­cure­ment board, came to an end.

As pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor, Khan will chair the board of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion.

Deputy chair of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion, Rob­by Bho­la, act­ed as pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor in the pe­ri­od be­tween Lalchan’s de­par­ture and June 28, 2023.

The oth­er mem­bers of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion board are: Joy Ab­dul-Mo­han; Natasha Ash­by; Fred­er­ick Bowen; Na­dine Bushell; David Charlerie; Herdis Lee Chee; An­tho­ny Lamb and Tracey Ro­jas.

The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015 states that the Of­fice of Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment shall be gov­erned by a Board, “which shall be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion.”

The leg­is­la­tion states that the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor “shall have at least ten years’ ex­pe­ri­ence in mat­ters re­lat­ing to pro­cure­ment and pos­sess—

(i) a de­gree from an ac­cred­it­ed Uni­ver­si­ty in a field re­lat­ing to fi­nance, eco­nom­ics or law; or

(ii) a de­gree from an ac­cred­it­ed Uni­ver­si­ty in ac­count­ing or an equiv­a­lent pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tion in ac­count­ing.

Khan’s ap­point­ment took ef­fect from Wednes­day June 28, in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 10 (1) (a) of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Khan has over 30 years’ ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing in the pub­lic ser­vice, and has a deep knowl­edge of and hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence in all as­pects of pub­lic pro­cure­ment.

Among the oth­er se­nior lead­er­ship po­si­tions which she held in the pub­lic ser­vice, Khan was an act­ing for­mer deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and for­mer act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary at the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment.

The re­lease added that over her long years of pub­lic ser­vice, Khan built up for­mi­da­ble pub­lic pro­cure­ment ex­pe­ri­ence, in­clud­ing in the prepa­ra­tion of scopes of work and terms of ref­er­ence in the pub­lic sec­tor, eval­u­a­tion of pub­lic sec­tor ten­ders, analy­sis and se­lec­tion of pro­cure­ment meth­ods in the pub­lic sec­tor, pro­vid­ing over­sight of pub­lic sec­tor pro­cure­ment process­es, project man­age­ment and con­tract ad­min­is­tra­tion in the pub­lic sec­tor, and in oth­er ar­eas of pro­cure­ment plan­ning, co­or­di­na­tion and con­trol in the pub­lic sec­tor.

Khan there­fore pos­sess­es a keen in­sight in­to the is­sues and chal­lenges re­lat­ing to pub­lic pro­cure­ment, ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

On April 26, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo ful­ly pro­claimed the sec­tions of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, No 1 of 2015 that were not pre­vi­ous­ly pro­claimed.

The Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try, and oth­ers, lob­bied the Gov­ern­ment to pro­claim the leg­is­la­tion from Sep­tem­ber 2015, when the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, was re­turned to of­fice.