Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, is geared to­wards as­sist­ing in re­pay­ing the UNC’s fi­nanciers, who can now be giv­en con­tracts with­out pro­cure­ment over­sight, for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young claimed yes­ter­day.

“This bill is worse than Sec­tion 34! It’s Sec­tion 34 on steroids—it’s UNC gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy dic­tat­ed by UNC fi­nanciers!” Young said dur­ing yes­ter­day’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives de­bate on the bill.

Re­ject­ing the bill, Young said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, while in Op­po­si­tion in 2019, had promised to strength­en the OPR’s pow­ers.

“To­day, in her ab­sence, they’re do­ing the ex­act op­po­site—com­ing to find spe­cif­ic ar­eas that would as­sist their fi­nanciers so they could now re­pay and give con­tracts to!” he said.

Young said the ar­eas ex­empt­ed from pro­cure­ment law un­der the bill, in­clud­ing en­er­gy and hous­ing, “...are the bil­lion-dol­lar ar­eas...”

Dis­miss­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo’s ex­pla­na­tions as “pure spin,” Young said the bill, which he claimed com­plete­ly gut­ted the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR), was one of the most dan­ger­ous bills ever pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment, save for Sec­tion 34.

“The bill al­so makes it un­reach­able for the same ‘small peo­ple’ (Tan­coo) talked about, and the con­trac­tors who are be­ing side­lined by in­struc­tions to those who are in charge of pro­cure­ment, as to whom con­tracts should be giv­en,” he added.

He said the bill was al­so a threat to all con­trac­tors al­ready fac­ing vic­tim­i­sa­tion, pre­vent­ing them from go­ing to the OPR, which would now lack the nec­es­sary pow­ers.

As an ex­am­ple of the OPR’s pre­vi­ous pow­ers, Young not­ed that the OPR had halt­ed the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s $3.4 bil­lion hous­ing project and was al­so deal­ing with the Land­mark­TT is­sue. But the OPR’s pow­ers were be­ing halt­ed just when there were pro­cure­ment con­cerns, he added.

Young said soon af­ter UNC Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein re­cent­ly spoke of the PNM’s “in­abil­i­ty” to stop cer­tain hous­ing projects, the bill was pro­duced. He said it was “rushed” to dodge trans­paren­cy watch­dog en­ti­ties.

Young said the bill was be­ing brought just be­fore the Fi­nance Min­is­ter presents his sec­ond Bud­get, when bil­lions of dol­lars in ex­pen­di­ture would be in­volved.

“The au­dac­i­ty to bring this bill to le­galise what they’re al­ready do­ing so they won’t break the law is worse than what they did with Sec­tion 34—that was a hand­ful of fi­nanciers. This one now is the mar­ish and the parish who go and kiss the ring! This is a clear track be­ing cut by agouti to run with cor­rup­tion!” Young added.

Young was re­fer­ring to Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act, 2011, which was pro­claimed on Au­gust 31, 2012, but quick­ly re­pealed by the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment af­ter pub­lic out­rage and po­lit­i­cal fall­out.

The pro­vi­sion al­lowed a judge to dis­charge an ac­cused per­son and record a ver­dict of not guilty if the al­leged of­fence was com­mit­ted 10 years or more be­fore the ap­pli­ca­tion and the tri­al had not be­gun with­in the pre­scribed pe­ri­od.

But pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy arose af­ter it was re­alised the bill could ben­e­fit de­fen­dants in the long-run­ning Pi­ar­co Air­port cor­rup­tion case.

Say­ing the cur­rent law al­ready pro­vides for the pro­vi­sion of wa­ter and pow­er in emer­gen­cies, Young said the Gov­ern­ment knew who it want­ed con­tracts to go to.

“It’s hap­pen­ing right now in wa­ter truck­ing,” he said.

On the ex­emp­tion of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty from pro­cure­ment law, he said elec­tric ve­hi­cles were be­ing used by the TTPS where no one could find the in­vi­ta­tion for ten­der.

“When you trace it back to who was award­ed the con­tract, it’s clear Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy is be­ing dic­tat­ed by a hand­ful of fi­nanciers,” he said.

He asked who would sup­ply the $3.4b for the hous­ing project.

“We can see in­ter­fer­ence oc­cur­ring at the two State banks—FCB and Re­pub­lic — to come. We’re hear­ing about what’s go­ing to hap­pen at Re­pub­lic Bank—and that same UNC fi­nancier’s hands in­side there,” he said.