Richard?Lord

Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for seek­ing to ap­prove new pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion that gave the pro­posed reg­u­la­tor too much pow­er.He was speak­ing in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing de­bate on new pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, which was brought by Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie.

Im­bert said the law pro­vid­ed no checks and bal­ances for the of­fi­cial, who was to be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent. A re­view pan­el should be es­tab­lished to look at cer­tain de­ci­sions of the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor, he said. With­out a re­view pan­el there would be a lengthy and cost­ly process to chal­lenge any de­ci­sion of the reg­u­la­tor, he said."It will take you years and will cost you mil­lions to chal­lenge a de­ci­sion of a pro­cure­ment en­ti­ty," he added.

Im­bert said in Grena­da there was a pro­cure­ment board which re­viewed the de­ci­sions of a pro­cure­ment en­ti­ty there.Based on the pro­posed law, there was no­body to re­view the de­ci­sions made by the reg­u­la­tor oth­er than the High Court, he said, telling leg­is­la­tors T&T "must be the on­ly coun­try in the world that has that sit­u­a­tion."

De­scrib­ing the bill as de­fec­tive, Im­bert said when it be­came law and the reg­u­la­tor was ap­point­ed for a sev­en-year term he or she "can sus­pend pro­cure­ment, ter­mi­nate pro­cure­ment, can over­turn a con­tract."That could on­ly be chal­lenged via the lengthy and cost­ly court process and that sit­u­a­tion could not be ac­cept­ed in any pro­gres­sive na­tion, he ar­gued.

He added: "You can't have that be­cause what the Ex­ec­u­tive is do­ing is hand­ing over its de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme to an un­elect­ed of­fi­cial who will not and can­not be re­moved by any­body in prac­tice and would have supreme pow­er."

He said the Op­po­si­tion draft­ed amend­ments to the leg­is­la­tion to pre­vent that sit­u­a­tion but they were not ac­cept­ed by the Gov­ern­ment. One of them, he said, would pro­vide for the reg­u­la­tor to be re­moved by the find­ings of a tri­bunal ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent fol­low­ing a res­o­lu­tion of both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment.

Tewarie made no men­tion of that dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion ear­li­er, he said, and did not ad­dress the is­sues that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said would be dealt with dur­ing the Oc­to­ber break.But Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, who spoke af­ter Im­bert, said there were pro­vi­sions in the leg­is­la­tion for the re­moval of the reg­u­la­tor and the con­di­tions for re­moval of the reg­u­la­tor were clear­ly spelt out in the leg­is­la­tion.

"The reg­u­la­tor," he said, "can­not just get up an de­cide that 'I will put pres­sure on some­body and I will do this and so on.' It can­not hap­pen like that."There are checks and bal­ances in the leg­is­la­tion to deal with these par­tic­u­lar mat­ters."He said the bill al­so pro­vid­ed for the be­hav­iour of the reg­u­la­tor to be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment if nec­es­sary.

Fol­low­ing that, the Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Min­is­ter "can then make rec­om­men­da­tions to the Cab­i­net for the re­moval of the reg­u­la­tor and this can then be put to the Pres­i­dent for ac­tion," he not­ed.He said Im­bert omit­ted to men­tion that pro­vi­sion.

Grif­fith mum on res

Con­tact­ed last night, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said the op­er­a­tion to bring the fam­i­ly back to T&T was on­go­ing.

How­ev­er, he de­clined to say at what stage it had reached.

"I am oblig­ed to re­spect the pri­va­cy of the fam­i­ly un­til they at least get to Lon­don. I pre­fer not to com­ment now be­cause to do so will com­pro­mise the op­er­a­tion."