JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Char­tered sur­vey­or and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try, Afra Ray­mond has warned that re­cent amend­ments to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, have placed the coun­try on the precipice of con­fu­sion and cor­rup­tion.

Speak­ing at the Port-of-Spain Ro­tary Club meet­ing yes­ter­day, Ray­mond, who was one of the ad­vo­cates for the leg­is­la­tion, said the law was de­signed to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty in the use of pub­lic funds.

How­ev­er, he said the amend­ments to the law were now plac­ing the coun­try at risk of in­creased abuse and re­duced over­sight.

Ray­mond de­scribed the changes as a sig­nif­i­cant set­back for a sys­tem that took years to de­sign and im­ple­ment. He not­ed that the orig­i­nal leg­is­la­tion was passed in 2015 un­der the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion af­ter ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tion with civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions, pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies and pri­vate-sec­tor stake­hold­ers. The law was in­tend­ed to strength­en trans­paren­cy in State spend­ing and pro­vide in­de­pen­dent over­sight of pro­cure­ment ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ray­mond ar­gued that Par­lia­ment’s ap­proval of amend­ments to the leg­is­la­tion “gut­ted” the law, which in­clud­ed the in­creas­ing of the spend­ing thresh­old for se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials from $1 mil­lion to $2 mil­lion and the re­moval of sim­pli­fied pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions and the ex­pan­sion of cat­e­gories ex­empt from pro­cure­ment over­sight.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling, he said, were ex­emp­tions grant­ed for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pen­di­ture, en­er­gy-sec­tor projects and cer­tain pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship hous­ing de­vel­op­ments in­clud­ing the pro­posed Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion con­tracts worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3.4 bil­lion.

Re­fer­ring to re­cent con­tro­ver­sies in­volv­ing ex­pen­di­ture with­in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, Ray­mond ques­tioned the de­ci­sion to re­move pro­cure­ment over­sight from na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty spend­ing.

“At the very same time that we have all of these scan­dalous ar­ti­cles in the pa­per. Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, $550 mil­lion black hole, $220-mil­lion black hole, Gary Grif­fith this, Mar­vin Gon­za­les that, ac­cu­sa­tions up and down the place about the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, which is na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. At that very same time, you in the Par­lia­ment re­mov­ing the con­trols about the ex­pen­di­ture of pub­lic mon­ey for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. So if there was con­fu­sion and cor­rup­tion and im­prop­er things when the con­trols were in place, could you imag­ine what’s about to hap­pen in this coun­try?”

Ray­mond said he no­ticed a pat­tern with this Gov­ern­ment of not in­clud­ing its ma­jor plans in the Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tions to avoid scruti­ny.

He said ex­empt­ing sig­nif­i­cant ar­eas of State ac­tiv­i­ty from pro­cure­ment scruti­ny cre­ates op­por­tu­ni­ties for abuse and di­min­ish­es pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Ray­mond called on the Op­po­si­tion to make good on their promise to re­turn the law to its full strength on re­sum­ing of­fice and asked that it go a step fur­ther, rein­tro­duc­ing parts that it took out re­gard­ing le­gal fees.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that the law be changed so that in the fu­ture any amend­ments must be done with a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty.

In re­sponse, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les echoed Ray­mond’s con­cerns about the leg­isla­tive changes. While sup­port­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween po­lit­i­cal par­ties and civ­il so­ci­ety groups, Gon­za­les said the amend­ments high­light­ed weak­ness­es with­in the coun­try’s gov­er­nance frame­work.

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing its par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty to al­ter key leg­is­la­tion and ar­gued that fu­ture re­forms may be need­ed to pre­vent ad­min­is­tra­tions from weak­en­ing over­sight in­sti­tu­tions.