Jesse Ramdeo

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is pe­ti­tion­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to re­peal the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty act of 2020.

At a round ta­ble we­bi­nar on Mon­day, sev­er­al speak­ers in­clud­ing for­mer PNM fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira out­lined con­cerns with the leg­is­la­tion and the need for it to be re­pealed.

The main con­tention with the bill by civ­il so­ci­ety and busi­ness or­ga­ni­za­tions is clause 5, which re­moves le­gal, med­ical, fi­nan­cial, ac­count­ing and au­dit­ing ser­vices, as well as any oth­ers so deemed by the min­is­ter of fi­nance, from the re­mit of the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor.

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said un­der the Dr Kei­th Row­ley led ad­min­is­tra­tion, the amend­ed leg­is­la­tion served as a blow to trans­paren­cy and democ­ra­cy.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the pe­ti­tion is aimed at lob­by­ing Gov­ern­ment to re­store the leg­is­la­tion to it’s ini­tial struc­ture.

“We the un­der­signed call on the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to re­peal the pro­cure­ment amend­ment act of 2020 and I would in­clude here, the pre­vi­ous ones 2016, 2017 and 2020, to re­peal those amend­ment acts and re­store the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Prop­er­ty act 1 of 2015 in its orig­i­nal form,” it said.

Dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion, Nunez-Tesheira called on the Prime Min­is­ter to re­store the nec­es­sary checks and bal­ances to the leg­is­la­tion which safe­guards the coun­try, “ If he is aware of the abuse which can take place, and as he is the per­son to look af­ter the in­ter­ests of the coun­try, why re­move the pro­tec­tion of this leg­is­la­tion?” Nunez-Tesheira de­scribed the pe­ti­tion as a wa­ter­shed point for pre­serv­ing the econ­o­my she al­so stressed that her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the dis­cus­sion was sole­ly as an in­de­pen­dent voice.

For­mer sen­ate pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith said the amend­ments to sec­tions of the bill were a ret­ro­grade step and placed more am­bi­gu­i­ty over the award­ing of con­tracts, “ this is not ac­cept­able, we must call up­on them to change the leg­is­la­tion.”

Ac­cord­ing to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the leg­is­la­tion in its cur­rent form will not ad­dress in­stances of cor­rup­tion, “ we need this pro­cure­ment law to pro­tect the cit­i­zens of this land and to pre­vent the cor­rup­tion lev­els that can oc­cur and which have al­ready oc­curred I ask of you log un­to the pe­ti­tion and let’s sup­port it”.

Up to late yes­ter­day, there were over six­teen hun­dred sig­na­tures to the on­line pe­ti­tion.