Procurement commission silent
-despite growing questions over contracts
Despite being in place for over three months now, the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) has remained silent about rising concerns about the award of contracts such as those for schools to Kares Engineering Inc and in Bamia, Linden to a firm without experience.
In recent days the PPC has placed advertisements to fill key positions but this would not prevent commissioners from publicly addressing procurement issues that have been raised as huge contracts are being awarded on a weekly basis.
The PPC is comprised of attorney, Pauline Chase (chair); Financial Analyst, Joel Bhagwandin; former High Commissioner to Canada, Rajnarine Singh; Diana Rajcumar, former Personal Assistant to the Minister of Public Security and Berkeley Wickham, former Head of the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board.
Several efforts by Stabroek News to speak to Chase on procurement matters over the past month have been futile.
Stabroek News has made several calls to both the PPC’s office lines and to Chase’s mobile number for over one month. Contact details for this newspaper were taken with the promise of return calls, but these never came.
Three weeks ago, Chase was contacted as she was about to leave her office and was told that this newspaper was requesting an interview. She stated that she was not allowed to speak to the press and would have to ask permission. It was unclear from which authority she would seek authorization, as she did not state.
But told that the former Chair had on several occasions granted interviews, she said that she would have to ask the other commissioners. Chase said that she would also check the laws to determine what her role, as it pertained to speaking to the media required as “my interpretation is quite different to hers”.
Since the contact with Chase, this newspaper has been trying to get her response, to no avail.
Last week, a visit was again made to the PPC’s New Garden Street office, after calls and promises again for follow though did not ensue.
A number was given for Chase’s Secretary and the person on the receiving end again took the contact details and said that they would pass it on to the Chairman. There has been no further word.
With its constitutional status, the PPC has broad powers and requires no permission for any of its functions.
Article 212W (1) of the Constitution says that there shall be a PPC “the purpose of which is to monitor public procurement and the procedure therefor in order to ensure that the procurement of goods, services and execution of works are conducted in a fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost effective manner…”
Article 212W (2) says that the
“Commission shall be independent, impartial, and shall discharge its functions fairly”.
Article 212AA (1) lists numerous functions of the PPC and Article 212DD (1) underlines the power of the PPC to require any person or any entity including a ministry or government department to provide it with information.
In an invited comment, the Transparency Institute of Guyana Inc (TIGI) has criticised the PPC over its silence and inactivity.
Sharing of jobs
“When there was this appointment months ago, I was not inspired…the PPC now seems to be a sharing of jobs between parties and not a body with independence of mind to get value for taxpayers’ money. They seem to be there to take instructions,” Head of TIGI Frederick Collins
lamented to Stabroek News.
“While we are not surprised, we are disappointed,” he added.
TIGI said that silence from an autonomous constitutional body doesn’t augur well for transparency, given that the bulk of monies from the state’s coffers are spent on procurement and services.
Collins said that while the current PPC administration has been silent and should be flayed, the past body under the Chairmanship of Carol Corbin did not do enough as it pertains to intervention in Petroleum Sector.
“TIGI had noticed there was nothing in the appointment of the new commission members that inspired us that anything would be different from the performance of the previous PPC. The reason was that the previous PPC
was derelict in its duties as far as its purpose was concerned. In fact, its interpretation of the laws we found somewhat strange. We had written that as far as the laws of Guyana were concerned the award of petroleum contracts by government fell under the procurement laws,” he said.
“The PPC is expected to be proactive and that if it felt that the laws as existed were insufficient to address the petroleum industry it had a duty to make recommendations to Parliament…”, he said.
It is to this end that Collins said TIGI asserts that, “the silence on any matter of procurement which is clearly a breach of good procurement practice only signals that the new commission will continue in the same vein as the previous.”