Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives meets this af­ter­noon to de­bate amend­ments to the pro­cure­ment law—de­spite strong non-sup­port of the amend­ments by the Op­po­si­tion.

The House was re­called by the Gov­ern­ment from its mid-year break to deal with the amend­ments.

These pro­pose to al­low the ex­emp­tion of goods/ser­vices up to $1 mil­lion from pro­cure­ment law process­es. It al­so in­volves the val­i­da­tion of two ex­emp­tion or­ders for costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the Cari­com sum­mit and Ju­di­cia­ry is­sues. The or­ders were done by the Fi­nance Min­istry to fa­cil­i­tate those mat­ters but were not passed in Par­lia­ment as re­quired.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day slammed the amend­ments say­ing they would “wa­ter down” the pro­cure­ment law since amend­ments would al­low for neg­a­tive res­o­lu­tion of de­ci­sions—and would not re­quire Par­lia­ment ap­proval—rather than af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion which stip­u­lat­ed Par­lia­ment ap­proval.

Op­po­si­tion MP Sad­dam Ho­sein not­ed that af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion was agreed up­on by the Gov­ern­ment in the 2020 de­bate on the pro­cure­ment law. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the amend­ments would be the “fi­nal nail in the cof­fin” of the pro­cure­ment law.

Ho­sein had re­vealed the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to have the ex­emp­tion or­der on the sum­mit’s costs ap­proved in the Par­lia­ment.

Fi­nance sub­se­quent­ly de­fend­ed the Or­der cit­ing the lengthy process re­quired by the pro­cure­ment law. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so cit­ed this, warn­ing it could make the Gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions grind to a halt if un­ad­just­ed. He said he had di­rect­ed the Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness to seek re­call of the Par­lia­ment for sen­si­ble amend­ments to be done in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est and which would be passed with the Gov­ern­ment’s ma­jor­i­ty votes. Row­ley de­fend­ed the amend­ments on i95.5 ra­dio yes­ter­day.

Once passed, the amend­ments will be de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate to­mor­row. —Gail Alexan­der