DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mikey Joseph says the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) de­ci­sion to with­draw $3.4 bil­lion in hous­ing con­tracts ap­pears to be an at­tempt to con­tain fur­ther em­bar­rass­ment and re­store con­fi­dence in the pub­lic pro­cure­ment process.

The HDC can­celled the pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise on Thurs­day through an in­ter­nal mem­o­ran­dum, two months af­ter the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) in­struct­ed the state agency to sus­pend the con­tract awards to 11 com­pa­nies pend­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the ten­der­ing process.

The con­tracts, which in­volve the con­struc­tion of 3,700 hous­ing units, came un­der scruti­ny af­ter the Op­po­si­tion raised con­cerns about the method used to award them. The Op­po­si­tion al­so called for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, al­leg­ing that some of the 11 com­pa­nies were re­cent­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed.

Joseph, who was in­volved in dis­cus­sions on the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, ar­gued that the projects should nev­er have been award­ed through a sole-se­lect pro­cure­ment process.

He said sole-se­lect arrange­ments are in­tend­ed for high­ly spe­cialised goods or ser­vices where on­ly a lim­it­ed num­ber of sup­pli­ers can meet spe­cif­ic tech­ni­cal re­quire­ments. Hous­ing con­struc­tion, he ar­gued, does not fall in­to that cat­e­go­ry, giv­en the large num­ber of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al con­trac­tors ca­pa­ble of un­der­tak­ing such projects.

“I be­lieve the HDC would have looked at all that tran­spired and recog­nised it’s not go­ing to re­flect well on them. So, in or­der to save face, the best way to deal with it is to can­cel those con­tracts and try to put in place what would ap­pear to be a prop­er pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dure and process so they could get bet­ter ac­count­abil­i­ty,” he said.

Joseph said the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act was de­vel­oped over near­ly two decades and is found­ed on three cen­tral prin­ci­ples: in­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy and val­ue for mon­ey. While ac­knowl­edg­ing that a fresh pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise could im­prove ac­count­abil­i­ty, he cau­tioned that it would not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly guar­an­tee bet­ter val­ue.

“I’m not sure about val­ue for mon­ey be­cause some­times, just by the claus­es you put in­to your ap­pen­dix, you could end up with con­tracts skewed to a cer­tain ven­dor or sup­pli­er. So I’m not sure that is go­ing to guar­an­tee us val­ue for mon­ey, but it could bring in a lit­tle more val­ue and it could let the pub­lic know ex­act­ly what they’re get­ting in­to.”

He al­so weighed in on Gov­ern­ment’s plans to ex­pand pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships in the hous­ing sec­tor. On Thurs­day, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der dis­closed that Gov­ern­ment was ex­plor­ing broad­er part­ner­ship arrange­ments with pri­vate de­vel­op­ers as part of ef­forts to ac­cel­er­ate hous­ing con­struc­tion.

Joseph ar­gued that such arrange­ments must re­main sub­ject to the same lev­el of scruti­ny as any oth­er pub­lic pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise, par­tic­u­lar­ly where state as­sets are in­volved.

He said there is a mis­con­cep­tion that pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships fall out­side the scope of pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion be­cause pri­vate fi­nanc­ing may be in­volved. How­ev­er, he ar­gued that state lands and oth­er pub­lic as­sets still con­sti­tute pub­lic val­ue and must there­fore be sub­ject­ed to the safe­guards es­tab­lished un­der the law.

“Once you’re talk­ing about state prop­er­ty, there’s a val­ue to it, and the Act is not on­ly for the Gov­ern­ment procur­ing prop­er­ty, but al­so for the dis­pos­al of state prop­er­ty as well. So it’s laugh­able when I hear peo­ple sug­gest they are op­er­at­ing in a vac­u­um with the leg­is­la­tion. They are choos­ing what parts of the leg­is­la­tion to ref­er­ence and which parts they are not read­ing, to de­ter­mine whether they are op­er­at­ing with­in the frame­work of the law.”

The for­mer Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion head al­so not­ed that the mat­ter re­mains be­fore the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion, which re­tains broad in­ves­tiga­tive pow­ers.

He said that if the reg­u­la­tor de­ter­mines pro­cure­ment rules were breached, its find­ings can be re­ferred to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions for fur­ther ac­tion.

Un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, breach­es can at­tract sig­nif­i­cant penal­ties de­pend­ing on the na­ture and sever­i­ty of the of­fence, in­clud­ing fines run­ning in­to mil­lions of dol­lars, im­pris­on­ment, and dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion from bid­ding for state con­tracts.