The Integrity Commission's scope needs to be broadened to include declaration of income from members of tenders' committees, according to Independent Senator Helen Drayton. She made the suggestion during yesterday's Senate debate on a report from a parliamentary committee which dealt with legislative proposals to provide for public procurement and disposal of public property. This process seeks to replace the Central Tenders Board.
Senator Kevin Ramnarine, presenting the report, said the committee would not be able to complete its work in the current first session of Parliament,which ends June 17, and recommended the work be referred to a new committee in the next session. He said presentation of the report was necessary to save the committee's work and ensure a new committee team could carry on with the work of the original committee at the next session.
Drayton said an independent competent procurement process was critical to handle allegations of corrupt practices against Government and prevent situations of "himself investigating himself." She noted the recent probe of the NP contract, saying that conflicted with the published report of an evaluation team. That situation left questions because it was not stated whether the document published was a false document, she said.
Drayton said when public confidence in the procurement process was lacking, it discouraged good players from participating. Independent Senator Rolph Balgobin, advocating proper procurement systems, indicated it had become easy to attack people in public life. He noted the Mary King issue and others, including the NP contract. Balgobin said on Monday a journalist came to him with sheaves of documents regarding an issue. He said the intent of the story was to injure the Government.
Urging caution, Balgobin said: "Sometimes things are driven by people who don't win contracts and bids and I think we have to be mindful, all of us as public, as a media, how we deal with these things. "Sometime there's something there, sometimes there's an issue and sometimes it's easy to make it look like there's something, even if it isn't there." He said a revamp of the public procurement framework was therefore very necessary.
"And this," he added, "may provide a better degree of protection for people who are doing actual work from people who aren't. "This is not to say there's nothing wrong in the State enterprises, far from it. What I'm saying is we need to avoid having the executive and people in State enterprises distracted by having to respond to allegation after allegation when so many of them may be spurious," Balgobin added. He said an objective independent appeal mechanism was therefore important. Balgobin said it was necessary to develop the capacity and confidence "so when we say a deal is clean, it's actually clean."