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Friday, February 28, 2025

Procurement Regulator satisfied with progress after law proclaimed

by

Jesse Ramdeo
503 days ago
20231013

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Bev­er­ly Khan says she is “fair­ly sat­is­fied” with the ef­forts be­ing made to en­sure the com­pli­ance of con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Prop­er­ty Act, which was ful­ly pro­claimed back in April.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on how op­er­a­tions have been go­ing, Khan said bar­ring mi­nor is­sues af­fect­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy of op­er­a­tions, she was nei­ther daunt­ed nor dis­tract­ed by the process so far.

“In hind­sight, we should have placed a bit more at­ten­tion and ef­fort pri­or to procla­ma­tion to the test­ing of the sys­tems and re­quire­ments that were in­tend­ed to be in­tro­duced, but nev­er­the­less, progress is be­ing made and I am con­fi­dent that over the next three to six months, there will be ac­cel­er­at­ed ac­tion.”

The act was as­sent­ed to by the Pres­i­dent in Jan­u­ary 2015 un­der the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, it was not pro­claimed in­to law then.

Up­on as­sum­ing of­fice, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment made three amend­ments to the act be­tween 2016 and 2020.

But it was still not pro­claimed in­to law over the course of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s sev­en-plus years in of­fice.

The act speaks to se­cur­ing val­ue of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey in terms of ex­pen­di­ture, ac­count­abil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty and trans­paren­cy. It al­so en­cour­ages de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal con­trac­tors and lo­cal con­tent and seeks sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and pro­cure­ment.

Khan ex­plained that since full procla­ma­tion of the act, the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion has ob­served a con­cert­ed ef­fort on the part of con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers deal­ing with pub­lic bod­ies to achieve com­pli­ance.

“From es­tab­lish­ing the in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty and nam­ing pro­cure­ment of­fi­cers, which is a re­quire­ment of each pub­lic body, to in­sti­tut­ing codes of con­duct for pub­lic of­fi­cers and sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors, as well as in­ter­nal con­trol frame­works to de­vel­op­ing hand­books and guide­lines. There is ad­mit­ted­ly a lot still to be done, es­pe­cial­ly by pub­lic bod­ies, but good progress has been ev­i­dent so far,” Khan said.

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try, Fazir Khan, al­so recog­nised that bar­ring mi­nor teething prob­lems at the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion, it is ex­pect­ed that the reg­is­tra­tion of con­trac­tors and sub­mis­sion of rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion will add to the in­tegri­ty of op­er­a­tions.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Khan al­so added that with the Sep­tem­ber 30 dead­line hav­ing al­ready passed, the pub­li­ca­tion of the in­for­ma­tion will be sig­nif­i­cant.

He said this will as­sist in re­mov­ing doubts in the minds of cit­i­zens when it comes to how state works are con­duct­ed and man­aged “which will re­al­ly make for tan­gi­ble trans­paren­cy and with that, it is where the start of the ben­e­fits of pro­cure­ment re­form lies.”

T&T Con­trac­tors’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Glenn Ma­habirs­ingh mean­while added that his mem­ber­ship has al­so been mov­ing to com­ply with the leg­is­la­tion.

He re­mained en­cour­aged by the pub­lic en­gage­ment re­gard­ing the award of con­tracts.

“Since the pro­cure­ment has been pro­claimed, we have seen a lot more pub­lic ten­ders, a lot more ad­ver­tis­ing for ten­ders on the news­pa­pers, so I would say there are a lot more op­por­tu­ni­ties be­cause there are a lot more cir­cu­la­tion with re­spect to ten­ders.”

Ma­habirs­ingh is en­cour­ag­ing sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors to ad­here to the new reg­u­la­tions, which can ul­ti­mate­ly stamp out cor­rup­tion.


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