To­ba­go Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris has re­vealed plans to write to the Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor ex­press­ing con­cerns that the pro­cure­ment laws are not be­ing ad­hered to by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

In April this year, the Cab­i­net ap­proved the full procla­ma­tion of the re­main­ing sec­tions of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, No 1 of 2015.

The law makes it manda­to­ry for any­one pro­vid­ing ser­vices in the pub­lic sec­tor to be reg­is­tered with the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR).

How­ev­er, at a vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, the Mi­nor­i­ty Leader ex­pressed reser­va­tions that the THA may not be ful­ly com­pli­ant with the law.

“I have great con­cerns at this time that even now there are a num­ber of pro­cure­ment ac­tiv­i­ties hap­pen­ing with re­spect to the procla­ma­tion of this new act and whether the THA is in fact in breach,” he said.

Mor­ris said his in­for­ma­tion is that not many sup­pli­ers of ser­vices of the THA are reg­is­tered with the OPR as is re­quired.

“If that is the case, then it begs the ques­tion, how are they go­ing about procur­ing goods and ser­vices for the THA? I see this as an im­por­tant mat­ter,” he added.

Mor­ris said this was why he is reach­ing out to all the ad­min­is­tra­tors of di­vi­sions in the THA.

“Be­cause it is im­por­tant that they un­der­stand the role that they play in the pro­cure­ment process, in fact, the ad­min­is­tra­tors and the Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor is the key per­son and she pro­vid­ed del­e­gat­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tors and they are re­al­ly seen as the pro­cure­ment of­fi­cer of the di­vi­sion and the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer of the di­vi­sion. So in that realm any breach or flout of the law they are ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble and cul­pa­ble and there­fore it falls up­on them to en­sure that be­fore they award con­tracts that the process can stand scruti­ny, that the process is in keep­ing with the law.”

He en­cour­aged the Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor to take the lead on this to en­sure THA has the nec­es­sary sys­tems in place to com­ply with the law.

In re­sponse to the con­cerns raised by the mi­nor­i­ty Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith B Yis­rael said, “It’s clear from lis­ten­ing to the mem­bers of our Par­lia­ment last week, that it was prac­ti­cal­ly im­pos­si­ble to be ful­ly com­pli­ant with the new pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion.”

She told Guardian Me­dia that notwith­stand­ing the THA has been work­ing with its pro­cure­ment of­fi­cers, its le­gal of­fi­cers and its ad­min­is­tra­tors to en­sure that all ac­tiv­i­ties with­in the THA fol­low the law as close­ly as pos­si­ble.

“It is im­por­tant to note that the OPR is yet to pub­lish the mod­i­fied reg­u­la­tions to ac­com­pa­ny the amend­ments to the leg­is­la­tion passed last week. So, like many oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions, we wait,” she said.

Fi­nal amend­ments to the pro­cure­ment law were passed last week with Gov­ern­ment votes alone in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as the Op­po­si­tion with­held its sup­port.

Ac­cord­ing to the Gov­ern­ment, the amend­ments were nec­es­sary to deal with ex­ces­sive­ly lengthy process­es in the law which could have made gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions grind to a halt.

The is­sue of two ex­emp­tion or­ders passed for the Cari­com sum­mit and the Ju­di­cia­ry was pub­licly queried by Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein with threats of le­gal ac­tion.

This re­sult­ed in Par­lia­ment sub­se­quent­ly be­ing re­called for ex­tra­or­di­nary sit­tings to rec­ti­fy the is­sues.