Attorney Pauline Chase was on Friday sworn in before President Irfaan Ali as the fifth member of the Public Procurement Commission (PPC), which has now been fully reconstituted.
The four other members of the Com-mission — Joel Bhagwandin, Rajnarine Singh, Diana Rajkumar and Berkeley Wickham — were sworn in on July 1, 2022.
Ali, in brief remarks at the swearing in ceremony at State House yesterday, described Chase, who is the current president of the Guyana Bar Association, as reliable, efficient, of great integrity, transparent and dignified. The president noted that he was looking forward to the dynamic and analytical thinking that Chase would bring to the body.
The commission will function for three years. The chairman and deputy chairman for the commission will be elected by the commissioners at their first meeting. During the swearing in of the four Commissioners on July 1, Ali reminded them that their work is one that requires collective effort and constructive thinking. He said he was confident that their combined skillset will serve the needs of the Commission.
There has been no PPC since October of 2020 and billions of dollars’ in public works contracts have been awarded in the intervening period. 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.”
The first PPC was established in October 2016, which was more than 13 years after the Constitution was amended to cater for the procurement oversight body. The first members were Carol Corbin, Sukrishnalall Pasha, Emily Dodson, Ivor English and former Minister of Labour Nanda Kishore Gopaul. Corbin, a former project management professional and accountant with decades of experience working at the CARICOM Secretariat, was elected Chairperson of the Commission.
