The Public Procurement Commission (PPC) will this month review the proposed salary and benefits for its Chief Executive Officer after they were rejected by the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
The PAC has, however, given approval for the packages for the other two top PPC positions, Head of Corporate Services and Head of Operations.
“The Public Accounts Committee has advised us that they have considered our proposal for the benefits for our senior staff and they have made a recommendation so that we have been able to identify two persons but not the CEO one as yet,” Chairperson of the PPC Carol Corbin told Stabroek News in an interview last week.
“[As it pertained to] the CEO, they haven’t approved the proposed benefits, so they have advised that we should go back out and re-advertise…in the new month we will be looking to re-advertise for the CEO,” she added.
In June, PAC Chairman Irfaan Ali had told this newspaper that the committee had submitted its recommendation to the PPC for comment but has received no feedback.
Stabroek News understands that among the recommendations is that the CEO be paid no more than $700,000 a month, while the Head of Corporate Services and Head of Operations were to be paid no more than $500,000 a month. These recommendations will be finalised via a vote on a motion moved in the House by the Chairperson of the PAC. Ali has repeatedly told Stabroek News that he will move this motion after a recommendation from the PPC.
“The matter of the CEO of the PPC came to the committee and we dealt with it and sent a recommendation to the PPC some time ago and we haven’t heard anything since. We have to get a response to the recommendation from the PPC before we take it to the National Assembly,” Ali had noted.
Corbin said that she did not know the reason why the proposed remuneration and benefits for the CEO were rejected but surmised that maybe “What we were proposing was maybe exorbitant.”
Asked if the Commis-sion will scale down the benefits and resubmit a new proposal, she replied in the affirmative.
“We will have to. We haven’t as yet. We are concentrating on completing the process for the two that they have approved those being the Head of Corporate Services and Head of Operations,” she said.
Jamaican national Craig Beresford, who is currently Head of the Strategic Management Division of Caricom, was tipped to be the first Chief Executive Officer of the PPC. Beresford, who acted briefly as Jamaica’s Con-tractor General, would have assumed the post if he won parliamentary ap-proval.
The PPC last year advertised the positions, while stating that it would be unable to begin its work until these positions were filled. Among the PPC’s key functions, according to the Procurement Act, are to monitor and review the functioning of all procurement systems to ensure that they are in accordance with the law, and monitor the performance of procurement bodies with respect to adherence to regulations and efficiency in procuring goods and services and execution of works.
