It is now one year since the country has been without a Public Procurement Com-mission (PPC) but that hasn’t stopped the handing out of billions of dollars in contracts and the former Chairman of the body is deeply worried that crucial reform work done could be at risk.
The life of the five-member commission ended last year October and it is unclear if any bid pro-tests were made to procuring entities for this year.
“The PPC is foremost on the agenda of the PAC (Public Accounts Commit-tee). Our side have done our part and made nominations and are waiting on government’s side. We are ready and prepared and understand the importance of this body but they are dragging their foot. A PPC is long overdue,” Chair-man of the PAC and opposition parliamentarian Jermaine Figueira told the Sunday Stabroek when asked for an update.
However, PAC member and Minister of Public Works, Juan Edghill dismissed Figueira’s claims, saying that the PPP/C government understands the importance of having a functioning PPC. He added that government has done its part and is waiting for the National Assembly to reconvene this month as names of persons nominated have already been submitted to the police for checks and that with consensus the establishment of a new commission could come soon after the parliamentary recess. The recess ends next week.
“I am not surprised any member of the opposition will look for the opportunity to score cheap political points. The facts are that [at] the last meeting the PAC would have had on the PPC… we had received applications, not nominations. People applied. A sub-committee was formed which comprises the Chairman, Mr. Figueira and Government Chief Whip Gail Texeira. They have been tasked with engaging their principals, since the PPC requires a 2/3 majority in the Parliament,” Edghill told this newspaper.
He said that government’s side has proposed that the same method used to select the PPC Commissioners in 2015 be mirrored.
“We have advanced a proposal, which was what was accepted in 2015—government [has] three and opposition [has] two. All the names have been sent to the Commissioner of Police for due diligence checks and we are awaiting the end of the parliamentary recess for feedback and engagement at the PAC. As far as we are concerned, as a government, we have been pressing for the establishment of the PPC. We have played our role, provided the support and are following the process,” he said.
“The establishment can be as quick as we have agreements. All that would be required, once we have agreement, is a motion go to the National Assembly, the motion passed, the resolution issued and the named persons sworn in by the president. It is a committee that requires bipartisan support; two thirds in the National Assembly. The same mechanism that was used when the APNU[+AFC] assumed office in 2015…we have proposed that the same mechanism be used,” he added.
Too important
The PPC’s first and former Chairperson Carol Corbin says that the body is too important to have the process stalled over political sparring and is worried that money invested by the Inter-American Development Bank and human resource work put in will all go to waste. She said she is “appalled” at how staff at the New Garden Street-based Commission were treated.
Corbin pointed out that many of the staff members have departed as their contracts were “just left to expire” which in turn saw work stalled. “All expertise built just discarded. Life in Guyana!” she lamented.
“About eight out of twenty-two persons left because those still on the job had contracts that have not yet expired. The CEO and most technical officers [are] gone. It’s just crazy…Just crazy and [an] unbelievable situation. There must have been a better way!” she declared.
‘Languishing’
To the new Commission, whenever it is established, she advises it to press for a new Procurement Act as with assistance from the IDB, a lot of work was put in by the past commission in that regard.
She is hoping that the new commission would not take on “the norm” of changing administrators and criticizing all the work done and then have to start over a process already nearly completed.
“The norm here is that the new Commission will go in and criticize everything that the previous Commission did or didn’t do and then start from scratch. They, however, need to work on getting a new Procurement Act passed and other legislation that we already had in the pipeline, but [was] languishing at the AG’s Chambers,” the former Chairperson posited.
“With the assistance of IDB, lots of work was done to finalize a new Procurement Act everything is in place to have the Secretariat up and running if they bring in the requisite staff quickly. At the end of the day it all depends on the Commissioners selected and how they interpret or execute their mandate,” she added.
And with billions awarded in contracts for this year and no PPC, Corbin said that the only recourse available to an aggrieved bidder would be to file court action.
It is unclear if there have been protests from bidders this year as it was the PPC that would have informed on the number of cases it had received.
“(The procedure) is to ask the procuring entity to review the decision made. And this should be done before the actual award of a contract is made. If after a review is done and explanations provided, the bidder is still not satisfied, the only recourse in the absence of the PPC is the Court,” Corbin explained.
The Sunday Stabroek last week visited the PPC’s Queenstown office.
The building was housing, in addition to the remaining PPC staff, approximately 50 parliamentary staff as their building was undergoing renovations and asbestos was being removed.
Sources told this newspaper that a lot of staff had “come down with COVID” and it was why many were not at the office.
During this newspaper’s visit, PPC staff informed that they could not speak to the press and that all queries on operations had to be forwarded to the Ministry of Finance’s Finance Secretary Sukrishnalall Pasha.
Pasha was a commissioner on the former PPC. Calls to his mobile and office lines went unanswered.
However, Minister of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh said that while it was good to have a Finance Secretary who was once a PPC Commissioner, Pasha was not overseeing the management of the PPC but ensuring financial obligations of the body are met.
Transitioning
In October 2016, and more than 13 years after Guyana’s Constitution was amended to provide for the PPC, the procurement oversight body was established.
Corbin, Pasha, Emily Dodson, Ivor English and former Minister of Labour Nanda Kishore Gopaul were the first commissioners.
The five would later choose Corbin, a former project management professional and accountant with decades of experience working at the CARICOM Secretariat, as the Chairperson of the commission and in November 2016, they began operating.
The life of that body came to an end in October 2019 and after intervention by then President David Granger, the tenures of Corbin and Gopaul were extended for one year to allow for a transition.
Another body could not be established because there was no parliament for most of last year due to the elections impasse.
It is unclear what transitioning process will be allowed for when the National Assembly chooses the next five commissioners.
The Constitution provides that, “Subject to paragraph (2), members of the Commission shall be appointed for three years and shall be eligible for re-appointment, for one other term of office, not earlier than three years after the end of their first term. (2) Of those members first appointed, two shall hold office for four years.
It is the President who appoints the commissioners after the process of selection and approval by the National Assembly.
