Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty and Val­i­da­tion Bill 2023 which was passed in the Sen­ate ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing with the Gov­ern­ment and In­de­pen­dent votes will be re­turned to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Mon­day to rat­i­fy fur­ther amend­ments to the bill.

And, fol­low­ing Sen­a­tors’ con­cerns in the bill, the amend­ments will now al­low the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) to have re­mit over reg­u­la­tions and ex­emp­tion lists rather than the min­is­ter. The ini­tial form, which had in­volved the min­is­ter, had ap­peared to make the OPR im­po­tent.

“Sen­a­tor (Dr Paul) Richards made me do some home­work,” Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said in wind­ing up de­bate just be­fore pas­sage of the bill at 2.37 am yes­ter­day.

“And I re­alised that we were con­fer­ring sig­nif­i­cant pow­ers on a min­is­ter and I agree that we should not do that, so I’ve tak­en ‘the min­is­ter’ out.”

The bill was passed with votes from 15 Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tors and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors An­tho­ny Vieira, SC, Am­ri­ta De­onar­ine, Maria Dil­lon-Re­my and Charisse Seep­er­sad.

Vot­ing against it were UNC Sen­a­tors Wade Mark, Jear­lean John, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Anil Roberts, David Nakhid and Damien Ly­der as well as In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors Hazel Thomp­son- Ahye and De­oroop Teemul .

Ab­stain­ing were In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors Dr Paul Richards, Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh and Evans Welch.

The Sen­ate had scru­ti­nised the con­tro­ver­sial bill in a marathon sit­ting which be­gan at 1 30 pm on Thurs­day .

The bill’s amend­ments sought to make changes to pro­cure­ment law—to bet­ter fa­cil­i­tate its lengthy process­es—and to val­i­date two ex­emp­tion or­ders re­gard­ing costs as­so­ci­at­ed with host­ing the re­cent Cari­com Sum­mit and mat­ters in the Ju­di­cia­ry.

The bill was passed with amend­ments in the House via Gov­ern­ment ma­jor­i­ty votes, close to mid­night on Wednes­day. Op­po­si­tion MPs vot­ed against it.

In the Sen­ate, there were al­so stren­u­ous ar­gu­ments from the six UNC Sen­a­tors. All In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors ex­pressed con­cerns as well.

Some amend­ments were sug­gest­ed by In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors and in the end, amend­ments were made to two claus­es .

Con­clud­ing the de­bate, Im­bert said he had to do some “home­work” af­ter Richards’ con­tri­bu­tion and he con­sult­ed guide­lines. Among these, he ve­toed the as­pect of en­abling min­is­ters to con­fer sig­nif­i­cant pow­ers on them­selves.

Hav­ing lis­tened to sen­a­tors, Im­bert said he not­ed the “un­com­fort­able­ness” (sic), con­cern, wor­ry and fear he was pick­ing up with the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al even though it was amend­ed in the House.

He not­ed the orig­i­nal pro­pos­al was that the min­is­ter in his dis­cre­tion could make amend­ments via neg­a­tive res­o­lu­tion, “But we re­treat­ed from that in the House and brought in the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion.”

That pro­pos­al stat­ed, “On the rec­om­men­da­tion of the OPR or on the ini­tia­tive of the min­is­ter, through con­sul­ta­tion with the Of­fice.” But Im­bert con­ced­ed that sen­a­tors were right, since “con­sul­ta­tion” meant sim­ply in­form­ing the oth­er side and one didn’t have to lis­ten to them.

There­fore, he said, the amend­ment delet­ed the words “in con­sul­ta­tion with” in claus­es 3 and 5 and states “on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Of­fice, or up­on the min­is­ter’s ini­tia­tive with the agree­ment of the Of­fice.”

He said it takes out the min­is­ter’s pow­er and the min­is­ter is sub­or­di­nate to the OPR.

“No amend­ments will be made to the reg­u­la­tions or the ex­emp­tion lost un­less it’s the will of the OPR,” Im­bert added.

Im­bert said this al­so ap­plies to the sim­pli­fied reg­u­la­tions for those in the $1-mil­lion thresh­old cat­e­go­ry, which will al­so come from the OPR and not the min­is­ter.