The Public Accounts Com-mittee (PAC) of Parliament is deciding on the nominees for the Public Procurement Com-mission (PPC) and it should complete its work in another two months, as stipulated in the recent stakeholder consultation Communiqué.
But one member of the PAC says that this process means very little unless the PPC is established so that the appointed persons could fully function. The PPC is one of those commissions that have been held up for years because of wrangling between the government and the opposition.
According to member of the Alliance For Change (AFC), David Patterson MP, the revived work of the PAC was in response to the agreement reached in the National Stakeholder Consultations. In a short while the combined Opposition parties should be ready with their nominees for the PPC, he said. Those names are now being screened by the PNCR-1G, the AFC and Guyana Action Party (GAP).
Patterson said that it is more important that the nominees are well qualified for the task and not their political affiliation. The constitution of the members of the Board of the PPC has always been a bugbear in the negotiation process, which is more then four years old now. Specific qualifications are set out in the constitution for members of the PPC. The five members have to have “expertise and experience in procurement, legal, financial and administrative members.” They also have to be approved by two-thirds of the elected members of Parliament.
Patterson explained that the Communiqué coming out of the consultations only called for the appointment of the Commissioners to the PPC, not for the establishment of the Commission itself.
A study by the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) last year suggested the PPC be established so that certain functions that it has to perform can be removed from the ambit of the National Pro-curement and Tender Admi-nistration Board (NPTAB).
That report had pointed out that the mode of creation and manner of oversight of the NPTAB is qualitatively different from those constitutionally provided for the Public Procurement Commission.
The setting up of the PPC and the Public Procurement Appellate Tribunal is integral to the process of procurement since presently there is no recourse for contractors who feel wronged by the selection process.
Since the passage of the Procurement Act 2003, the NPTAB has been set up and is functioning. But detractors say that the setting up of this body undermined the intended work of the PPC by usurping some of its functions.
The setting up of the PPC was one of the decisions coming out of the Constitutional Reform Commission. But it was with the progression of the Constructive Engagement between President Bharrat Jagdeo and Leader of the Opposition Robert Corbin that the matter was given attention with its inclusion in the 2003 Communiqué as one of the commitments undertaken.
Speaking at his weekly press briefing on Friday, Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon said that Government is moving ahead with implementing all of the commitments made in the stakeholder consultation and was pressing for the establishment of all Constitutional bodies as agreed in the stakeholder process.
“We want to have the 90 days drop dead date met,” Dr Luncheon said. (Johann Earle)
