Mickela Panday
There is nothing wrong with wanting Government to move faster. There is everything wrong with making it easier to spend public money without the scrutiny that is supposed to protect it. That is the issue before us in the Government’s proposed amendments to the Public Procurement law.
Government’s argument is straightforward. The procurement system is too slow and rigid. Projects take too long. Businesses, particularly smaller businesses, face too many obstacles. The answer, Government says, is greater efficiency.
Ok. Fix the delays. Cut the bureaucracy. Use better technology. Set deadlines. Hold public bodies accountable when they move too slowly. But if the solution to a slow system is to weaken the safeguards around public money, we need to ask a much more serious question: What exactly are we making easier?
The proposed amendments expand exemptions from normal procurement rules, including in areas such as energy and national security and public-private partnerships involving public housing. Emergency procurement would receive wider exemptions. The threshold for certain simplified procurement would increase from $1 million to $2 million. The period in which a supplier can challenge a procurement decision would also be shortened.
But perhaps most importantly, the powers of the Office of Procurement Regulation (OPR) would be reduced.
Following an investigation, the OPR would no longer have the same authority to suspend procurement or contract performance, require a decision to be reconsidered, direct a re-evaluation or set aside an award. Its recommendations would be advisory rather than binding. Those are not minor administrative adjustments. They go to the heart of how public money is protected.
We do not have to imagine what independent scrutiny can uncover.
In April, the OPR directed the HDC to hold a proposed $3.4 billion housing procurement involving 11 contractors pending a review of the procurement record. One proposed contract was approximately $1 billion. The HDC subsequently cancelled the procurement exercise before contracts were entered into, saying the decision was in the public interest.
The OPR did not pronounce anyone guilty of corruption. It did something far more fundamental. It stopped the process to ask questions. That is what an independent regulator is supposed to do.
Its intervention did not prove wrongdoing. But it demonstrated why a watchdog must have the teeth to intervene before billions of dollars leave the public purse. Not after the contract is signed. Not after the money is spent. Not after the damage is done. BEFORE.
We have seen the same principle arise in other housing procurement matters. The OPR reviewed the LandmarkTT Allamby project in Corinth, involving a contract of approximately $129.8 million, after complaints raised questions about the procurement process, including selective tendering. A separate complaint concerned the proposed Beaucarro Residential Development in Couva, valued at more than $150 million.
A complaint is not proof of wrongdoing. An OPR review is not a finding of corruption. But that is precisely why oversight exists to answer questions before allegations become findings, contracts become irreversible and taxpayers are left carrying the cost.
Now look at what Government is proposing. More exemptions. Higher thresholds. Less time to challenge procurement decisions. And a regulator with fewer corrective powers.
Put those changes together and the concern becomes much bigger than whether a procurement process is five days faster or ten days slower. It is about who has the power to stop and question the spending of public money.
Government says these amendments will help the State deliver faster. Then make procurement faster without making oversight weaker. Give Government the tools to deliver, but give the public the tools to know how those decisions are being made.
This Government came into office promising openness and transparency. Those cannot be campaign words. They must be reflected in the laws it passes and the institutions it chooses to strengthen or weaken.
This is where the issue becomes bigger than one Government or one Bill. Governments change. Ministers change. Political parties change. But the safeguards must remain.
We do not want a procurement system that is strong when one party is in Government and conveniently weak when another takes power. We want the same rules to apply to everybody. Because today’s Government will eventually become tomorrow’s Opposition. And the powers you remove from the watchdog today may be the very powers you wish existed tomorrow.
This is not about assuming corruption. It is about understanding how corruption and abuse become possible. The opportunity for abuse grows when scrutiny is weakened. That should concern every citizen. The public purse is not Government’s money. It is our money.
Every dollar wasted, misused or awarded without proper scrutiny is a dollar that cannot be used for a school, a hospital, a road, a drain, a home or a service citizens actually need. So Government should not ask the people of Trinidad and Tobago for blind trust. It should give them something better. Transparency, accountability and strong independent oversight.
The question is not whether Government should be able to move quickly. Of course it should. The question is whether it should be able to move quickly without strong enough safeguards to protect the public purse. Because once the watchdog is weakened, you may not realise what you have lost until you need it most.
Mickela Panday is the Political Leader of the Patriotic Front and Attorney at Law
