Akash Sama­roo

Two of the coun­try’s biggest con­trac­tors say they whole­heart­ed­ly wel­come the full procla­ma­tion of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Prop­er­ties Act. But the Ju­nior Sam­my Group of Com­pa­nies says in ad­di­tion to pro­mot­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, the law will ad­dress cer­tain mis­con­cep­tions that some mem­bers of the pub­lic have for their in­dus­try.

“The pub­lic thinks this one is favoured, this one is be­ing giv­en con­tracts just so willy nil­ly, which from our ex­pe­ri­ence is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the case. Gen­er­al­ly, it’s ei­ther we’re se­lect­ed or in­vit­ed to ten­der and that’s what we re­spond to and in se­lec­tive ten­der­ing, there’s a pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion process,” ex­plained Dave Aqui, a con­sul­tant for the Ju­nior Sam­my Group of Com­pa­nies.

Aqui added that this lev­el of trans­paren­cy will al­so ben­e­fit oth­ers in the in­dus­try, who will now have some ev­i­dence for re­course if they them­selves see that they are be­ing elim­i­nat­ed from par­tic­i­pat­ing in cer­tain projects that they’ve met the re­quire­ments for.

Ac­cord­ing to sec­tion 13 (1) (a) of the law, one of the key func­tions of the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor is to es­tab­lish a com­pre­hen­sive data­base of in­for­ma­tion on pub­lic pro­cure­ment, in­clud­ing in­for­ma­tion on ten­ders re­ceived, the award and val­ue of con­tracts, and such oth­er in­for­ma­tion of pub­lic in­ter­est as the Of­fice thinks fit.

Mean­while, Sie­u­nar­ine Coos­al, the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Coos­al’s Group of Com­pa­nies, be­lieves the leg­is­la­tion will pro­mote pub­lic con­fi­dence when it comes to how tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars are spent.

“The leg­is­la­tion will fur­ther en­sure the cit­i­zen re­ceives val­ue for mon­ey, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty as it re­lates to all ex­pen­di­ture of pub­lic monies on all re­lat­ed con­struc­tion projects, goods and ser­vices for the ben­e­fit of Trinidad and To­ba­go. This leg­is­la­tion will be a game chang­er as to how busi­ness is con­duct­ed in the fu­ture,” Coos­al said in a me­dia re­lease sent to Guardian Me­dia.

The ex­ec­u­tive chair­man said there’s al­so a pro­vi­sion in the law that will help them plan for the fu­ture.

“I al­so see the An­nu­al Pro­cure­ment Plan, which is a re­quire­ment of the leg­is­la­tion, which needs to be pub­lished with­in six (6) weeks of the na­tion­al bud­get, as a strate­gic mech­a­nism which will great­ly as­sist the pri­vate sec­tor in plan­ning and re­spond­ing to the up­com­ing pro­grammes and projects.”

Sec­tion 24 (1) and (2) of the law speaks to re­ports that the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor will have to sub­mit to Par­lia­ment an­nu­al­ly.

The sub­sec­tions state the re­port shall in­clude, “a fig­ure rep­re­sent­ing the to­tal val­ue of con­tracts as award­ed by pub­lic bod­ies, and an­oth­er fig­ure rep­re­sent­ing the cost of the to­tal val­ue of pro­cure­ment con­tract vari­ances for that year; the num­ber of un­ful­filled con­tracts award­ed by pub­lic bod­ies in re­spect of pro­cure­ment; a sum­ma­ry of trans­ac­tions in re­spect of each pub­lic body spec­i­fy­ing in re­spect of pub­lic pro­cure­ment, the num­ber of pro­cure­ment con­tracts award­ed; the num­ber of pro­cure­ment con­tracts var­ied; the quan­tum of those vari­ances and the num­ber of un­ful­filled pro­cure­ment con­tracts and the quan­tum of cost in­curred.”

Aqui told Guardian Me­dia that the Ju­nior Sam­my Group has no prob­lems with this in­for­ma­tion be­ing made avail­able to the Par­lia­ment, de­spite the fact that it can, in turn, make its way in­to the pub­lic do­main.

“It’s state funds that are used, it’s pub­lic funds and we sup­port the trans­paren­cy in pub­lic pro­cure­ment, so I could on­ly see it iron­ing out some of the al­le­ga­tions that are made by the gen­er­al pub­lic, in so far of trans­paren­cy in Gov­ern­ment spend­ing and there are means at present if one wants to find out about cer­tain things that hap­pens in pub­lic ten­der­ing and pub­lic pro­cure­ment, you can ac­cess it through var­i­ous means.”

Cur­rent­ly, there is no chair­man for the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor, since for­mer Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Mooni­lal Lalchan end­ed his term on Jan­u­ary 11, 2023.

Yes­ter­day At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, told the Par­lia­ment that the deputy reg­u­la­tor will act in that ca­pac­i­ty un­til the po­si­tion is filled.

Aqui said he has no is­sue with who does the func­tion if the job is done, and he told Guardian Me­dia he hopes who­ev­er is ap­point­ed gets the back­ing to do the work.

“All we are hop­ing is that the Of­fice is giv­en the teeth to pro­vide what is in the law and iron out any of the usu­al per­ceived mis­con­cep­tions that may ex­ist with­in the process­es that we fol­low.”