Roslyn Car­ring­ton

It's the day of the PNM-led march on the con­tro­ver­sial Sec­tion 34 is­sue, and Mar­garet Rose is so fired up that she be­gins speak­ing even be­fore she sits down. She's not ex­cit­ed for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons, but by the in­tense re­ac­tion of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. To her, the out­cry strikes at our per­va­sive ap­a­thy to­wards mat­ters of pub­lic im­por­tance. "There's a gen­er­al malaise in the coun­try," she ex­plains. "We feel im­po­tent." Rose is an At­tor­ney-at-Law with 17 years' ex­pe­ri­ence, hav­ing start­ed her ca­reer in the cham­bers of in­flu­en­tial fig­ures like Theodore Guer­ra SC and Pamela El­der SC be­fore launch­ing her own prac­tice. While a sub­stan­tial part of her ear­ly ca­reer was spent on crim­i­nal de­fence, she turned her in­ter­est to pub­lic law. Be­ing ap­point­ed to be part of the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry in­to the Pi­ar­co Air­port project proved to be a wa­ter­shed in her ca­reer, as it raised ques­tions she hadn't been trained to face. How does our gov­ern­ment spend our mon­ey? Why is pro­cure­ment-the pur­chase of goods, works or ser­vices-seen as a low-lev­el ad­min­is­tra­tive func­tion, when it is strikes at fun­da­men­tal is­sues like in­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy and val­ue for mon­ey? Af­ter Rose was ap­point­ed to sev­er­al oth­er ma­jor in­quiries such as the Uff Com­mis­sion and the Lan­date probe, she be­came more aware of the pauci­ty of rules and sys­tems gov­ern­ing pro­cure­ment trans­ac­tions and a lack of pro­fes­sion­al ca­pac­i­ty, a sit­u­a­tion made worse by out­dat­ed le­gal texts, and lit­tle em­pha­sis be­ing placed on this area by the ma­jor train­ing in­sti­tu­tions. "Giv­en the lim­it­ed ap­pli­ca­tion of the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board, there was no over­ar­ch­ing frame­work that gov­erned pub­lic sec­tor pro­cure­ment."

This awak­en­ing of in­ter­est spurred her on to ob­tain a Mas­ter's in Cor­po­rate and Com­mer­cial Law. She has al­so sat on the boards of sev­er­al State en­ter­pris­es, where she de­scribes her ini­tial ap­proach to the role as be­ing "as be­ing no-non­sense, very ag­gres­sive about com­pli­ance, be­cause of my back­ground in fraud and bid-rig­ging in­ves­ti­ga­tions." For Rose, the hot-but­ton is­sue of pro­cure­ment opened up a whole new as­pect to her le­gal ca­reer. In con­junc­tion with Caribbean col­leagues such as Sen­a­tor He­len Dray­ton and Ja­maican Quan­ti­ty Sur­vey­or, Woodrow White­ley, she found­ed the Caribbean Pro­cure­ment In­sti­tute. The pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tion works to ed­u­cate and cre­ate a net­work among fi­nan­cial, le­gal, au­dit and pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als, pol­i­cy-mak­ers, and in­ter­na­tion­al uni­ver­si­ties. The CPI im­me­di­ate­ly threw it­self in­to in­ten­sive train­ing ini­tia­tives. By in­vi­ta­tion from var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties and even gov­ern­ments, Rose has lec­tured on the is­sue in places like Cana­da, Tunisia, Swe­den and Nige­ria. She hopes her ef­forts will bring about re­form, not just with­in the pri­vate sec­tor, but, more im­por­tant­ly, in pub­lic sec­tor con­tract­ing. "Pro­cure­ment is one of the most crit­i­cal gov­ern­ment func­tions. It per­me­ates every gov­ern­ment ac­tiv­i­ty: roads, health care, in­fra­struc­ture, de­fense... If it's not done well, the peo­ple's re­sources are open to abuse, waste, and mis-man­age­ment." Since 2008, through the CPI she has al­so host­ed bi­en­ni­al Caribbean Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Con­fer­ence (CP­PC), which has been re­ceived with en­thu­si­asm by re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als at the high­est lev­els. The third in­stal­ment will be held on Oc­to­ber 18th-19th at the Hy­att Re­gency.

Rose promis­es that this is a con­fer­ence with a dif­fer­ence. Be­yond the dy­nam­ic pre­sen­ta­tions there are al­so in­ten­sive train­ing sem­i­nars. In what she calls a 'third gear', par­tic­i­pants will be giv­en on­go­ing ca­pac­i­ty build­ing sup­port to kick­start pro­fes­sion­al and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion. Del­e­gates will re­ceive con­fer­ence ma­te­ri­als on a new iPad3, loaded with all the con­fer­ence ma­te­ri­als and a mo­bile net­work­ing app. They will al­so have ac­cess to the Gov­er­nance, An­ti-Cor­rup­tion, Pro­cure­ment and So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (GAPS) Re­source & eLearn­ing Por­tal. GAPS will give at­ten­dees ac­cess to re­sources and re­search, and an ask-the-ex­perts fo­rum at no ex­tra charge. This gives at­ten­dees the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­ply what they have earned when the con­fer­ence is over. She is al­so of­fer­ing del­e­gates com­pli­men­ta­ry bench­mark­ing and re­view of their com­pa­ny's ethics and an­ti-fraud poli­cies, and ten­der doc­u­men­ta­tion.

The CPI is al­so part­ner­ing with the Caribbean In­sti­tute of Foren­sic Au­dit­ing to help com­pa­nies set up a "Speak-Up Sys­tem" that al­low em­ploy­ees to dis­creet­ly re­port aber­ra­tions in the way their em­ploy­ers do busi­ness. All very ex­cit­ing, but, as she ad­mits, the in­ten­si­ty of the pace led her to make a crit­i­cal life de­ci­sion, giv­ing up her pri­vate prac­tice to fo­cus on the CPI full time. The in­tense work­load is even more of an is­sue as Rose has a one-year old son, the child of her sec­ond mar­riage. This mar­riage, by the way, caused a rip­ple or two, see­ing that it was to Queen's Coun­sel, An­drew God­dard...who rep­re­sent­ed Ude­cott on the Uff Com­mis­sion, while she rep­re­sent­ed the MP for Diego Mar­tin West, Dr. Kei­th Row­ley. She al­so has a 20-year-old son. "I al­ways thought I could do it all, but there are on­ly 24 hours in a day. Af­ter a lot of soul-search­ing, I re­alised it is more crit­i­cal that I work in the CPI, for the pub­lic good." She has no re­grets. "It's been dif­fi­cult, but I've al­ways been pas­sion­ate about mak­ing a dif­fer­ence."