JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Farley: Procurement regulator to decide ambulance issue

by

11 days ago
20250630
One of the ambulances purchased by the THA

One of the ambulances purchased by the THA

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says it is up to the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor, not the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA). to de­ter­mine whether the To­ba­go Re­hion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) fol­lowed prop­er pro­ce­dure in ac­quir­ing new am­bu­lances.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the THA bud­get de­bate, Au­gus­tine con­demned the mi­nor­i­ty coun­cil’s pres­sure over the pro­cure­ment.

“The mem­ber op­po­site and his friends have made very heavy weath­er, about some am­bu­lances on the is­land and I want to ad­dress that be­fore I close, be­cause many peo­ple don’t un­der­stand how the pro­cure­ment sys­tem works,” Au­gus­tine said.

He con­firmed that the THA has re­ferred the doc­u­ments for ex­ter­nal re­view.

“The in­struc­tion went to the TRHA since that time to send all of the pro­cure­ment doc­u­ments to the of­fice of the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor. Let the of­fice of the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor make a de­ter­mi­na­tion as to whether the pro­cure­ment process was good or bad,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers have no in­flu­ence over pro­cure­ment de­ci­sions.

“We don’t have any say in pro­cure­ment. You know, we have no say what­so­ev­er.

“On­ly a named pro­cure­ment of­fi­cer and the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer for the di­vi­sion have a say and if, as an ex­ec­u­tive, we say, ‘Go buy five bales of toi­let pa­per,’ they could just go out and buy the cheap­est.

“We can’t go and tell the pro­cure­ment peo­ple we don’t want this cheap brand, that is not ef­fi­cient, buy this brand, it’s bet­ter.”

“We could send them the scope they ten­der, and then we on the back end must blind­ly hope that what they in fact ten­dered for and what they have in fact pro­cured meets the needs that we have for the peo­ple of the is­land, and hope to God that they align,” he said.

The am­bu­lance con­tro­ver­sy sur­rounds a 2023 con­tract for 12 new am­bu­lances that cost over $16 mil­lion. On­ly four ve­hi­cles have been de­liv­ered so far.

There were con­cerns about their con­di­tion and ef­fi­cien­cy when they ar­rived. Soon af­ter go­ing in­to ser­vice one of them re­port­ed­ly failed to climb a hill, rais­ing se­ri­ous ques­tions about whether the am­bu­lances are suit­able for To­ba­go’s ter­rain.

The mat­ter has drawn sharp crit­i­cism. Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris has writ­ten to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau, for­mer act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin and the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor call­ing for a crim­i­nal probe.

IDA po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus has al­so de­mand­ed an­swers, say­ing the is­sue should be re­ferred to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and the Fraud Squad.

She al­so called for a full au­dit of all con­tracts award­ed by the THA from 2021 to now.

At a press con­fer­ence last month the RHA de­nied all al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing say­ing if the am­bu­lance doesn’t meet the needs to the peo­ple, the is­land can re­cov­er its mon­ey.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored