Ten years and counting

THE GOVERNMENT and Opposition do not agree on procurement reform.

Why are we not surprised?

All parties agree the State must change the way it awards contracts, that there is too close a relationship between campaign financiers and governments, and that politicians sometimes use public office for private gain.

Yet the history of the Public Procurement and Disposal of Property Act is one of rife disagreement.

Parliament was first seized of this issue in October 2010, under the Kamla Persad-Bissessar administration. Over the course of two years, mainly at in-camera committee hearings, politicians reportedly bickered over the finer details.

By June 2012, the committee produced a report. But it took another two years before a law was passed days before Christmas in 2014. The PNM, then in opposition, abstained.

The legislation was partially proclaimed in 2015 at the end of Ms Persad-Bissessar’s administration.

Five years later, her successor is yet to do better.

Instead, the administration of Dr Keith Rowley first sent the law back to yet another committee. Then it spoke of working to staff the regulator’s office and to draft the rules needed to operationalise the law.

Five years passed and the PNM promised, in its manifesto earlier this year, to bring rules into force “early.”

If the timeline of implementation has been prolonged and vague, the amendments brought by the Government in the interim have been specific in their intent. The regulator’s term was shortened. Provision was made for a process for removing this independent official.

Now, the Government has proposed further amendments which suggest exemptions from the proposed system – exemptions so wide as to raise the alarm among civil society groups and Mrs Persad-Bissessar, who herself failed to implement this law fully.

We have sympathy for any government seeking to introduce meaningful change.

We acknowledge that both the Prime Minister and Ms Persad-Bissessar at times had little choice but to oversee a gradual process.

Early in his first term, Dr Rowley was perhaps justified in delaying full proclamation after none other than the head of the Public Service warned Parliament in 2016 about the public service’s lack of readiness.

In relation to the amendments due to be considered before Parliament today, we also grant there might be justifiable circumstances in which red tape needs to be avoided to ensure the urgent acquisition of goods and services, especially in the post-covid19 world.

But urgency is no reason to disfigure, permanently, the very system that is needed to ensure emergency powers are not abused.

After almost a decade, MPs must today tell us: are they really serious about doing the right thing? Or will it be more of the same? And will the door remain open for bobol to continue?

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"Ten years and counting"

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