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.

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Hope for speedy passage of Public Procurement Bill

by

20140520

As the Sen­ate de­bates the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Bill, 2014 to­day, the pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il-so­ci­ety groups are call­ing on the pub­lic to join them in urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to have the bill passed be­fore Par­lia­ment is pro­rogued next month.Mak­ing the call was chair­man of the Pri­vate Sec­tor Civ­il So­ci­ety Group on Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Win­ston Ri­ley dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Nor­mandie Ho­tel, St Ann's.He said civ­il so­ci­ety had en­dorsed the bill with a few amend­ments to be im­ple­ment­ed as promised by the gov­ern­ment.

"That is, the whole ques­tion of a prop­er de­f­i­n­i­tion of a procur­ing en­ti­ty which does not con­fuse the is­sue of 'procur­ing en­ti­ty' with 'pub­lic body,' and a look again at the is­sue of dis­pos­al with­in the bill it­self."The third one has to do with the role of civ­il so­ci­ety in the bill it­self. What we want is a corps of peo­ple who have a di­rect in­ter­est in the whole ques­tion of pro­cure­ment and are able to give guid­ance to the is­sue of pro­cure­ment and the reg­u­la­tions," Ri­ley said.He said in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, civ­il so­ci­ety had been play­ing a greater role in gov­er­nance be­cause laws by them­selves did not en­sure good gov­er­nance."What en­sures good gov­er­nance is the ac­tiv­i­ty of the peo­ple with­in the so­ci­ety and if that can be en­trenched in the law, then I think we will go a long way in the whole is­sue of com­ing to terms with good gov­er­nance," Ri­ley added.

He said it was a tremen­dous achieve­ment that there was a bill be­fore the House which was laid in the Sen­ate last April 2."The biggest is­sue with the bill is that there was an ex­cep­tion clause, 7 (2), which al­lows all re­la­tion­ships be­tween our Gov­ern­ment and an­oth­er gov­ern­ment and al­so any re­la­tion­ship our gov­ern­ment has with fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions not to be sub­ject to the bill," Ri­ley said.He said there had been a re­ver­sal of that clause as man­dat­ed by Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie, which was wel­comed by the groups.Al­so in at­ten­dance were CEO of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Cather­ine Ku­mar; pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­Cham) Hugh Howard; pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try Afra Ray­mond and pres­i­dent of the T&T Lo­cal Con­tent Cham­ber (TTL­CO) Lennox Sir­jus­ingh.

Ray­mond, who al­so spoke, said the bill rep­re­sent­ed some 12 years of ef­fort and must not be­come an­oth­er Sec­tion 34."We worked very hard to get a sat­is­fac­to­ry bill. There are a cou­ple of small points which we still need to work out and once we get that done and hope­ful­ly we get it passed in Par­lia­ment, we then want the en­tire act en­act­ed."We do not want an­oth­er Sec­tion 34... first, last and nev­er again. We don't want the bill passed and then the sec­tion on pub­lic mon­ey is ex­clud­ed, or the bill passed and the sec­tion on reg­u­la­tors ex­clud­ed," Ray­mond stressed.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored