Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC) pres­i­dent Fazir Khan is warn­ing that Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed amend­ments to the pub­lic pro­cure­ment law could weak­en safe­guards in­tend­ed to pro­tect tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, even as he ac­knowl­edges that the cur­rent sys­tem needs re­form.

Khan said the JCC sup­ports ef­forts to make pub­lic pro­cure­ment faster and less bur­den­some, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the de­mands of in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment, but ar­gued that ef­fi­cien­cy should not come at the ex­pense of trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and fair­ness.

“Re­form must sim­pli­fy and strength­en the sys­tem—not weak­en the fun­da­men­tal pro­tec­tions for trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty, fair­ness and val­ue for mon­ey,” Khan said.

His com­ments come ahead of Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed amend­ments to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act.

Among the JCC’s main con­cerns is the pro­pos­al to ex­empt pro­cure­ment val­ued at up to $2 mil­lion by min­istries, State en­ter­pris­es and statu­to­ry bod­ies from re­quire­ments un­der the Act.

Khan said $2 mil­lion can­not be con­sid­ered a mi­nor pub­lic con­tract and ar­gued that, at a min­i­mum, such ex­pen­di­ture should re­quire writ­ten quo­ta­tions, doc­u­ment­ed eval­u­a­tions, con­flict-of-in­ter­est de­c­la­ra­tions, val­ue-for-mon­ey as­sess­ments and prop­er au­dit trails.

“Re­port­ing a con­tract to the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion af­ter it has been award­ed is not the same as procur­ing it through a trans­par­ent and ac­count­able process,” he said.

The JCC is al­so rais­ing con­cerns about pro­posed ex­emp­tions in­volv­ing ar­eas such as en­er­gy, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, pub­lic hous­ing pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships and emer­gency util­i­ties.

While Khan ac­knowl­edged that the State must be able to move quick­ly dur­ing gen­uine emer­gen­cies and on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters, he cau­tioned that emer­gency pro­vi­sions should not be­come a means of by­pass­ing pro­cure­ment rules.

“Emer­gency pro­cure­ment should be an ex­cep­tion­al pro­ce­dure, not a route around pro­cure­ment law,” he said.

The JCC wants emer­gency con­tracts to re­quire writ­ten jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, an ex­pla­na­tion of why com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment was im­prac­ti­cal, lim­its on the scope and du­ra­tion of the con­tract, even­tu­al dis­clo­sure and manda­to­ry post-award re­view by the OPR.

Khan is al­so ob­ject­ing to pro­posed changes af­fect­ing the reg­u­la­tor’s pow­ers fol­low­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

He said pre­vent­ing the OPR from sus­pend­ing, re­strain­ing or oth­er­wise af­fect­ing pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings could leave the reg­u­la­tor iden­ti­fy­ing breach­es on­ly af­ter con­tracts have ad­vanced and pub­lic mon­ey has al­ready been com­mit­ted.

“In­de­pen­dent over­sight must re­main ca­pa­ble of pre­vent­ing a prob­lem, not mere­ly de­scrib­ing it af­ter the fact,” Khan said.

The JCC al­so has reser­va­tions about al­low­ing le­gal costs to be award­ed against un­suc­cess­ful pro­cure­ment chal­lengers, warn­ing that this could dis­cour­age small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es from pur­su­ing le­git­i­mate com­plaints.

It is al­so ques­tion­ing the pro­posed re­duc­tion in the stand­still pe­ri­od be­fore an award can pro­ceed, from a min­i­mum of ten work­ing days to as few as five.

Rather than broad ex­emp­tions, Khan is propos­ing a tiered pro­cure­ment sys­tem, with stream­lined pro­ce­dures for low-val­ue pur­chas­es, ad­di­tion­al doc­u­men­ta­tion and quo­ta­tions for medi­um-val­ue con­tracts, and full com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment for high­er-val­ue con­tracts.

The JCC is now call­ing for mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion in­volv­ing Gov­ern­ment, Par­lia­ment, the OPR, busi­ness groups, pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies and civ­il so­ci­ety be­fore the amend­ments are en­act­ed.

“Pub­lic pro­cure­ment re­form should there­fore fol­low a sim­ple prin­ci­ple: Sim­pli­fy pro­ce­dures, but do not weak­en safe­guards. Ac­cel­er­ate de­liv­ery, but do not re­duce ac­count­abil­i­ty,” Khan said.