Yvonne Ba­boolal

The ap­proach be­ing tak­en by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to the In­vad­er's Bay project rep­re­sents a con­tin­u­a­tion of the old and makes it a breach of trust and promise to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.This was the view of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC) which held a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Hilton Trinidad yes­ter­day. Re­peat­ing their call for prop­er pub­lic pro­cure­ment sys­tems, JCC pres­i­dent Afra Ray­mond in­sist­ed that they are not try­ing to stop the Gov­ern­ment's de­vel­op­ment of 70 acres of land at In­vad­er's Bay nor pre­vent any par­tic­u­lar per­son from get­ting the con­tract.

"There is a huge act of pro­cure­ment tak­ing place there (In­vad­er's Bay) and the sit­u­a­tion has all the in­gre­di­ents for cor­rup­tion," Ray­mond said.Some of the JCC's prob­lems with the project in­clude:

• Pro­pos­als were to be sub­mit­ted with­in an un­re­al­is­ti­cal­ly short time scale (Oc­to­ber 4) for such a huge de­vel­op­ment.

• There has been no stake­hold­er par­tic­i­pa­tion in the de­vel­op­ment process.

• The re­quest for pro­pos­al (RFP) by the Min­istry of Plan­ning re­quires that the new de­vel­op­ment must be com­ple­men­tary to the ex­ist­ing de­vel­op­ment of Movi­etowne Com­plex, which seems in­ex­plic­a­ble and im­prac­ti­cal.

• The RFP is silent to as to the re­quire­ment for an En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment.

• The spoils go to one de­vel­op­er.

JCC im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent Win­ston Ri­ley said the group has writ­ten to Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie to state their ob­jec­tion and ask for a re­vi­sion of the process.He said they at­tend­ed a meet­ing with Tewarie and Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz on Sep­tem­ber 26. "We note that our con­cerns have not been ad­dressed." Ri­ley said the lack of a prop­er needs as­sess­ment is al­so a glar­ing omis­sion in the In­vad­er's Bay mat­ter.

"We were told (by the Min­is­ters) that the eval­u­a­tion rules would be fi­nalised af­ter the sub­mis­sions were re­ceived."We re­gard that as com­plete­ly un­ac­cept­able," Ri­ley said.The JCC said the PP promised to pass leg­is­la­tion re­form­ing the pro­cure­ment process by May this year but not­ed that it has not hap­pened.Ri­ley said the pub­lic pro­cure­ment leg­isla­tive process has paused. He said work start­ed by an orig­i­nal Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment in­to the mat­ter was pre­served un­til a new JSC takes over.

"We were ad­vised that the new JSC is to be ap­point­ed short­ly to com­plete the work of the orig­i­nal JSC."We would like to note that our pri­vate/civ­il so­ci­ety group stands ready to re­sume work on this."Ri­ley said they are propos­ing new pub­lic pro­cure­ment sys­tems which they are hop­ing will be­come leg­is­la­tion. He said the new sys­tems will "en­hance com­pe­ti­tion, re­duce po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the award of con­tracts and act as an ef­fec­tive an­ti-cor­rup­tion mea­sure.

"Giv­en the far-reach­ing con­se­quences of these pro­pos­als, the Gov­ern­ment must pub­lish the draft leg­is­la­tion for pub­lic com­ment be­fore the mat­ter is de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment," Ri­ley said.He said one of the JCC's great­est con­cerns on the pub­lic pro­cure­ment mat­ter re­lates to the UFF re­port, aris­ing out of the UFF Com­mis­sion of In­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor."The Min­is­ter of Jus­tice Her­bert Vol­ney is re­spon­si­ble for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the 91 rec­om­men­da­tions in the UFF re­port.

"The JCC has writ­ten to Min­is­ter Vol­ney on three oc­ca­sions to of­fer our as­sis­tance in any work­ing group the Min­istry might have es­tab­lished."We have nev­er had a re­ply," Ri­ley said.