Now that the Third Ses­sion of the 12th Par­lia­ment has been of­fi­cial­ly opened, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed yes­ter­day that it will be a busy ses­sion for the next year.

“This pe­ri­od that is com­ing up would be very hec­tic, there are a num­ber of things that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to get done,” Row­ley said.

The con­tentious Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is high on the list to be com­plet­ed.

“We ex­pect to get the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion pro­claimed ful­ly, there are some lil (sic) hic­cups and rough edges in there but I ex­pect that we are go­ing to go ahead with it and smooth them out along the way,” he said.

For months there have been in­creas­ing calls from stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing from the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC), for the law to be ful­ly pro­claimed.

Ac­cord­ing to for­mer JCC pres­i­dent Afra Ray­mond, the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act was passed over sev­en years ago in Jan­u­ary 2015, dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion. He said the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion then amend­ed the act three times be­fore the reg­u­la­tions were agreed to with The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) and ap­proved by the Par­lia­ment sev­en months ago, in Jan­u­ary 2022.

Oth­er items on the leg­isla­tive agen­da for the Gov­ern­ment are cy­ber­crime laws, elec­tion fi­nanc­ing and the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, Row­ley said.

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form is al­so a key fo­cus.

Dr Row­ley said the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the leg­is­la­tion is ex­pect­ed to be done by 2023. He said the re­form and elec­tion would go hand in hand.

So, will there be an elec­tion this year?

“Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know,” he said.

As it re­lates to an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion, he said there aren’t many new things but said there needs to be an im­prove­ment in de­tec­tion and pros­e­cu­tion and case man­age­ment at the courts.

“I must tell you, with­out be­ing per­son­al­ly crit­i­cal of mem­bers of the Ju­di­cia­ry, our sys­tem of dis­pens­ing jus­tice is much too slow and it ben­e­fits the crim­i­nal el­e­ment,” he said.

The PM said once a crime has been de­tect­ed and ev­i­dence pro­duced, the courts must work ex­pe­di­tious­ly to re­solve the mat­ter.

“This thing about a mat­ter start­ing in year nought and by year fifty it is still go­ing on that is whol­ly un­ac­cept­able and whether it is my fault, your fault, their fault it is just un­ac­cept­able,” he added.

He said a lot of mon­ey has been spent and ef­fort put in and “we are not see­ing any im­prove­ment.”

He said that is one of the big prob­lems fac­ing T&T and it is quite de­mor­al­is­ing to the T&TPS.