Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein has re­ject­ed Op­po­si­tion claims that the Gov­ern­ment is weak­en­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pro­cure­ment safe­guards, ac­cus­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of hypocrisy over its own record on re­cusals, ex­emp­tions and sin­gle-source con­tracts while in of­fice.

Ho­sein, the Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs, made the ac­cu­sa­tions dur­ing yes­ter­day’s de­bate on amend­ments to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act.

Op­po­si­tion MPs have ar­gued that the amend­ments would weak­en the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) and al­low more State spend­ing to take place out­side the nor­mal pro­cure­ment frame­work.

But Ho­sein in­sist­ed the Gov­ern­ment was not strip­ping the reg­u­la­tor of its pow­ers, ar­gu­ing in­stead that the leg­is­la­tion was clar­i­fy­ing the dis­tinc­tion be­tween pub­lic-in­ter­est com­plaints un­der Part IV of the Act and for­mal chal­lenge pro­ceed­ings un­der Part V.

“We are not touch­ing that,” Ho­sein said of chal­lenge pro­ceed­ings, un­der which he said un­suc­cess­ful bid­ders can seek to have pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings sus­pend­ed.

He ar­gued that fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a pub­lic-in­ter­est com­plaint, the OPR’s role un­der the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion is to make rec­om­men­da­tions, while stronger pow­ers to sus­pend pro­ceed­ings ap­ply to for­mal chal­lenges by bid­ders.

“We are not gut­ting, we are not re­mov­ing any pow­er,” Ho­sein said. “We are cir­cum­scrib­ing and clar­i­fy­ing what are the cur­rent pow­ers of the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor.”

Ho­sein then turned his at­ten­tion to the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, ar­gu­ing that Op­po­si­tion MPs now crit­i­cis­ing the amend­ments had their own record to an­swer for.

He cit­ed in­for­ma­tion he said came from the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tari­at show­ing nu­mer­ous re­cusals by for­mer min­is­ters be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2015 and April 2025.

Ac­cord­ing to Ho­sein, for­mer min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s name ap­peared 140 times on the list, while Faris Al-Rawi ap­peared 88 times, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh 46 times, Ran­dall Mitchell 20 times, Regi­nald Ar­mour 14 times and for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley 13 times.

Ho­sein al­so raised sin­gle-source pro­cure­ment at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), claim­ing that be­tween 2023 and 2026, $172 mil­lion in work was pro­cured through sin­gle-source arrange­ments, com­pared with $130 mil­lion through com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment.

He high­light­ed one con­tract in­volv­ing Ricky Raghu­nanan Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed for the con­struc­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 92 town­hous­es at Tre­strail Lands, D’Abadie.

He claimed the ten­der­ing pe­ri­od ran for just sev­en days.

“An­swer how Ricky Raghu­nanan got a $72 mil­lion sole se­lect con­tract and the ten­der­ing pe­ri­od was sev­en days, from the date of the in­vi­ta­tion to the date of the clo­sure of the bid,” Ho­sein chal­lenged.

Ho­sein claimed that de­spite ap­prox­i­mate­ly $72 mil­lion be­ing spent on the project, the town­hous­es could not be oc­cu­pied. He al­so de­fend­ed the pro­posed $2 mil­lion pro­cure­ment thresh­old for Per­ma­nent Sec­re­taries and oth­er ac­count­ing of­fi­cers, say­ing those of­fi­cials would re­main sub­ject to fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions, au­dits and re­port­ing re­quire­ments.

“There must be a record, there must be a lev­el of ac­count­abil­i­ty,” Ho­sein said, adding that the OPR would con­tin­ue to have over­sight be­cause con­tracts would still have to be re­port­ed.