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.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

Loopholes in new bill says Balgobin

by

20140521

The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Bill does not prop­er­ly ad­dress is­sues of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Rolph Bal­go­b­in said late Tues­day in his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate on the leg­is­la­tion in the Sen­ate.While the bill says sup­pli­ers can­not get pub­lic funds if con­vict­ed for crim­i­nal of­fences re­lat­ed to their pro­fes­sion, he said, that did not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of crim­i­nals be­ing suc­cess­ful in pub­lic pro­cure­ment mat­ters.

"The way that crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty works in this coun­try is there are a great many crim­i­nals who are do­ing busi­ness with the State who are guilty of no pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct what­so­ev­er," Bal­go­b­in said. "They have no pro­fes­sion, or if they do, theirs is a crim­i­nal pro­fes­sion.

"We should not be giv­ing pub­lic mon­ey to crim­i­nals. That has been done over and over again in the his­to­ry of this coun­try and it is of­fen­sive for it to be made a po­lit­i­cal is­sue when this has spanned var­i­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions. It has grown in­to a mon­ster that we are not re­al­ly able to con­tend with," he added.The In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor said the bill did not take ac­count of sit­u­a­tions where a sup­pli­er might be a crim­i­nal or is in charge of a crim­i­nal en­ter­prise.

He said: "If we have in­tel­li­gence, if we are aware that some­one is a crim­i­nal ... they can't get pub­lic mon­ey. Pub­lic mon­ey is what peo­ple who pay tax­es pay. I don't want to pay you to rob me. Of worse, I don't want to pay you to kill me which is hap­pen­ing more and more of­ten."

Bal­go­b­in de­scribed the bill as a "tor­tured piece of leg­is­la­tion if ever there was one," not­ing that gov­ern­ments in T&T have not been able to es­cape "the stain of cor­rup­tion re­lat­ed to pub­lic pro­cure­ment." He al­so said the is­sue of cor­rup­tion in the con­text of pub­lic pro­cure­ment "has in­jured our view of peo­ple in pub­lic life."Bal­go­b­in said he did not agree with the pro­pos­al for the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) to de­ter­mine renu­mer­a­tions for mem­bers of the board deal­ing with pub­lic pro­cure­ments.

"If you don't pay peo­ple well here, watch them take bribes. Just watch them," he said.Ac­cord­ing to the sen­a­tor, the SRC was "still op­er­at­ing with an em­bed­ded log­ic that has gone well past its sell by date per­pe­trat­ing an ar­ti­fi­cial dis­count for pub­lic work."This is a re­al­ly bad idea and these peo­ple should be paid mar­ket rates," he said.

On the is­sue of lo­cal con­tent, Bal­go­b­in said the leg­is­la­tion did not go far enough. He said pub­lic pro­cure­ment could serve as a de­vel­op­ment tool if the pri­vate sec­tor had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work and lo­cal con­tent was of­fered space and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to bid."More at­ten­tion should be paid to im­prov­ing the stan­dards of sup­ply. Pub­lic pro­cure­ment can be a mech­a­nism by which providers of goods and ser­vices re­al­ly raise their game. We can raise the bar to get world class stan­dards," he said.

When Bal­go­b­in com­plet­ed his con­tri­bu­tion at 7.55 pm, the Sen­ate was ad­journed to May 27 at 11 am.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored