Amid Landmark TT furore, former OPR regulator tells current officer holder

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

"Stick to your guns and do your job ac­cord­ing to the law, which is there to pro­tect you."

That's the ad­vice from for­mer pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor Mooni­lal Lalchan to cur­rent Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Bev­er­ly Khan and the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR).

Lalchan gave the ad­vice af­ter Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein's com­ments fol­low­ing word that Moru­ga res­i­dent Ed­ward Collins had filed a com­plaint with the OPR on al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties con­cern­ing a Land­mark­TT hous­ing de­vel­op­ment at Beau­car­ro, Cou­va. Collins urged a sus­pen­sion of the project, called for an ex­am­i­na­tion of the pro­cure­ment of ser­vices for con­struc­tion of the project and ques­tioned an al­leged "se­lec­tive" process in­volved. He was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Ka­reem Mar­celle, a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment MP.

Ho­sein had said he wasn't aware of any com­plaints be­ing filed, but said if that was so, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is free to ob­ject to every sin­gle project that Land­mark­TT does. He said the projects are en­tire­ly fund­ed by the de­vel­op­er, no tax­pay­er mon­ey is be­ing spent and no state land is be­ing trans­ferred. How­ev­er, Ho­sein said it was strange the OPR board and reg­u­la­tor had no is­sues with se­lec­tive ten­der­ing dur­ing the PNM’s term in of­fice, where bil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars were be­ing spent.

Ho­sein added, “It’s al­so pass­ing strange the num­ber of com­plaints the OPR and its reg­u­la­tor ig­nored or ne­glect­ed to in­ves­ti­gate un­der the PNM’s term. Very soon, all in­for­ma­tion will come to light and the OPR board and reg­u­la­tor will have many ques­tions to an­swer. Mean­time, I look for­ward to re­spons­es from the OPR, which we will def­i­nite­ly com­pare to their ac­tions and re­spons­es to com­plaints dur­ing the PNM’s term in of­fice.

The OPR's Khan hasn't re­spond­ed to TG queries sent about Collin's com­plaint or Ho­sein's state­ment.

For­mer reg­u­la­tor Lalchan, how­ev­er, ex­plained some as­pects of the OPR's sit­u­a­tion.

Lalchan said, "I was OPR chair­man from 2018 to 2023. Since the act wasn't pro­claimed un­til April 2023, we couldn't ful­ly in­ves­ti­gate mat­ters. On­ly when the act was pro­claimed in 2023 could the OPR have ful­ly dis­charged its du­ties un­der Sec­tion 13 of the act.

"On­ly then could the in­ter­nal pro­ce­dures be im­ple­ment­ed in terms of do­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, han­dling chal­lenge pro­ceed­ings and ap­point­ing the nec­es­sary peo­ple to such pan­els. So, the OPR had to be giv­en time to put its house in or­der post-procla­ma­tion."

Lalchan ac­knowl­edged that Ho­sein had sent a ver­bal "shot across the reg­u­la­tor's bows."

Lalchan added, "I'd sug­gest that the reg­u­la­tor, board and man­age­ment of the OPR stick to 'their guns' - that is, stick to the law and do their job ac­cord­ing to the law, as the law will give you guid­ance and pro­tec­tion in deal­ing with these ac­tiv­i­ties. Stick to your process and where the chips fall, they fall."

Stress­ing the en­ti­ty has pro­tec­tion un­der the law, Lalchan said, "And the coun­try is look­ing to­wards the OPR as an in­de­pen­dent non-po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion to con­tin­ue ad­dress­ing ques­tions that arise in mat­ters in­clud­ing of cor­rup­tion or col­lu­sion.”

He added, "There will al­ways be de­trac­tors, but the law will pro­tect the OPR in every sit­u­a­tion they find them­selves in. You can't be an­swer­ing back every time some­body says some­thing but there are a num­ber of al­leged breach­es that have been raised in the cur­rent mat­ter that has been pre­sent­ed and the coun­try ex­pects the OPR to en­sure the law is abid­ed by - and the OPR has the full pro­tec­tion of the law in terms of do­ing their job."