JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, February 24, 2025

Saddam warns Procurement Regulator: You could be the next Jaiwantie

by

165 days ago
20240912

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

An Op­po­si­tion MP has warned Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Bev­er­ly Khan to watch out as she could be the “next Jai­wantie Ram­dass” af­ter Khan’s Pro­cure­ment Re­port not­ed non-com­pli­ance with pro­cure­ment law by some front­line min­istries to se­lec­tive ten­der­ing of con­tracts val­ued over $1.2 bil­lion.

Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein in­di­cat­ed this at Mon­day’s UNC meet­ing. Ho­sein de­mand­ed the pro­cure­ment process for the se­lec­tion of the per­son who’s re­design­ing T&T’s Coat of Arms and whom he al­leged was hand-se­lect­ed.

Af­ter the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor’s first an­nu­al re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, Ho­sein said Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Khan not­ed in the re­port that the lev­el of pre­pared­ness for the trans­for­ma­tive changes brought on by full procla­ma­tion of the Pro­cure­ment Act was gross­ly in­ad­e­quate.

“I want to tell Ms Khan watch out! She could be the next Jai­wantie Ram­dass. They might pelt she out of the of­fice!” Ho­sein added.

Ram­dass is the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al who is at odds with of­fi­cials from the Fi­nance Min­istry over T&T’s ac­counts for 2023.

Ho­sein said the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor’s re­port is telling and has se­ri­ous mat­ters in it.

“The re­port cit­ed the min­istries which were not com­ply­ing with the law in terms of pub­li­ca­tion of con­tracts. First is the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Tourism Min­istry, the En­er­gy Min­istry, the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter!” he added.

Ho­sein said the re­port stat­ed the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor al­so voiced “great con­cern” about a sig­nif­i­cant overuse of non-com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment meth­ods con­trary to the act’s ob­jec­tives.

“That means that’s sole se­lect, which means ‘you see you fel­la, ah giv­ing you the con­tract’. It’s hand­pick­ing their friends, fam­i­ly and fi­nanciers,” Ho­sein added.

“For 2023 to 2024, the first quar­ter - 70 per cent of the con­tracts were hand se­lect­ed. For quar­ter two, 87.3 per cent. Quar­ter three - 51 per cent. Quar­ter four - 78 per cent.”

Ho­sein said the re­port stat­ed the val­ue of the con­tracts with re­spect to se­lec­tive ten­der­ing was over $1.2 bil­lion.

He al­leged, “They’ve now hand se­lect­ed a par­tic­u­lar per­son to re­design the Coat of Arms. I’m not at­tack­ing any in­di­vid­ual but there’s law to de­ter­mine how we hire per­sons and there must be a process - so what was the process to re­tain this per­son? We cast no as­per­sion on the per­son but we call in­to ques­tion the process for her ap­point­ment. There was no pro­cure­ment for that...it was a hand picked per­son, Gov­ern­ment must an­swer.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored