Geisha Kow­lessar

Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC), Afra Ray­mond, says he does not be­lieve the Gov­ern­ment is giv­ing the pub­lic enough time to dis­cuss the pro­posed pub­lic pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie's an­nounce­ment in the Sen­ate last week, that the bill would not be ini­ti­at­ed un­til at least three weeks have elapsed to al­low time for pub­lic scruti­ny in keep­ing with com­mit­ments al­ready made to have the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion in the pub­lic do­main.

Speak­ing on a ra­dio pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Ray­mond, who has been in sup­port of the pub­lic pro­cure­ment law, said, "This is a very im­por­tant and very com­pli­cat­ed mat­ter and I don't think three weeks is suf­fi­cient," Ray­mond said.He said the bill con­tained cer­tain pro­vi­sions which did not prop­er­ly pro­tect the pub­lic's in­ter­est and these is­sues had to be be ironed out prop­er­ly.

"The man in the street is well aware that this is a crit­i­cal is­sue in the coun­try. The steal­ing has a cor­ro­sive ef­fect on the moral fi­bre of the coun­try. It is cre­at­ing a sce­nario where the on­ly way we can have a path to­wards bet­ter­ment in the coun­try is to re­solve this is­sue prop­er­ly... it has to be re­solved in a civilised fash­ion and it has to be re­solved by dis­course," Ray­mond said.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure the pub­lic un­der­stands what was con­tained in the bill and ini­ti­ate dis­cus­sion with non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions."The tabling of the bill was done in rel­a­tive qui­etude. One would al­most say dis­crete­ly. There needs to be a high im­pact cam­paign at the lev­el of the State to en­gage the cit­i­zens," he said."If we get this right our coun­try can turn the cor­ner and start mov­ing de­ci­sive­ly to­wards a clear set of be­hav­iour in pub­lic and com­mer­cial life."

Ray­mond said the JCC had five key prin­ci­ples on pub­lic pro­cure­ment which had to be present in any prop­er pro­cure­ment law.These in­clude:

1. Trans­ac­tions of pub­lic mon­ey

2. De­fine prop­er­ly what is a procur­ing agency whether a gov­ern­ment agency, a State en­ter­prise like Nid­co or Ude­cott or a pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ship

3. There must be in­de­pen­dent reg­u­la­tion. The reg­u­la­tor must be in­de­pen­dent­ly ap­point­ed, in­de­pen­dent­ly fund­ed and must not be sub­ject­ed to any in­struc­tions from any politi­cian

4. There must be val­ue for mon­ey

5. Ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion of civ­il so­ci­ety

He said in clause sev­en of the bill there was spe­cif­ic ex­clu­sion of any sit­u­a­tions where there was a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment in place, or where there was a project fi­nanced by an in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nanc­ing agency."The way things are run­ning in this coun­try now... we look at the Cou­va Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal for in­stance. Most of the largest projects in the coun­try are tak­ing place with­in these two mech­a­nisms," Ray­mond said.

"So if you're cre­at­ing a law to bring about prop­er over­sight, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty for pub­lic mon­ey, but you are ex­clud­ing most of the trans­ac­tions, then we are not go­ing very far. It's not ac­cept­able in the present form."