Farley: Procurement regulator to decide ambulance issue

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says it is up to the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor, not the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA). to de­ter­mine whether the To­ba­go Re­hion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) fol­lowed prop­er pro­ce­dure in ac­quir­ing new am­bu­lances.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the THA bud­get de­bate, Au­gus­tine con­demned the mi­nor­i­ty coun­cil’s pres­sure over the pro­cure­ment.

“The mem­ber op­po­site and his friends have made very heavy weath­er, about some am­bu­lances on the is­land and I want to ad­dress that be­fore I close, be­cause many peo­ple don’t un­der­stand how the pro­cure­ment sys­tem works,” Au­gus­tine said.

He con­firmed that the THA has re­ferred the doc­u­ments for ex­ter­nal re­view.

“The in­struc­tion went to the TRHA since that time to send all of the pro­cure­ment doc­u­ments to the of­fice of the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor. Let the of­fice of the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor make a de­ter­mi­na­tion as to whether the pro­cure­ment process was good or bad,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers have no in­flu­ence over pro­cure­ment de­ci­sions.

“We don’t have any say in pro­cure­ment. You know, we have no say what­so­ev­er.

“On­ly a named pro­cure­ment of­fi­cer and the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer for the di­vi­sion have a say and if, as an ex­ec­u­tive, we say, ‘Go buy five bales of toi­let pa­per,’ they could just go out and buy the cheap­est.

“We can’t go and tell the pro­cure­ment peo­ple we don’t want this cheap brand, that is not ef­fi­cient, buy this brand, it’s bet­ter.”

“We could send them the scope they ten­der, and then we on the back end must blind­ly hope that what they in fact ten­dered for and what they have in fact pro­cured meets the needs that we have for the peo­ple of the is­land, and hope to God that they align,” he said.

The am­bu­lance con­tro­ver­sy sur­rounds a 2023 con­tract for 12 new am­bu­lances that cost over $16 mil­lion. On­ly four ve­hi­cles have been de­liv­ered so far.

There were con­cerns about their con­di­tion and ef­fi­cien­cy when they ar­rived. Soon af­ter go­ing in­to ser­vice one of them re­port­ed­ly failed to climb a hill, rais­ing se­ri­ous ques­tions about whether the am­bu­lances are suit­able for To­ba­go’s ter­rain.

The mat­ter has drawn sharp crit­i­cism. Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris has writ­ten to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau, for­mer act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin and the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor call­ing for a crim­i­nal probe.

IDA po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus has al­so de­mand­ed an­swers, say­ing the is­sue should be re­ferred to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and the Fraud Squad.

She al­so called for a full au­dit of all con­tracts award­ed by the THA from 2021 to now.

At a press con­fer­ence last month the RHA de­nied all al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing say­ing if the am­bu­lance doesn’t meet the needs to the peo­ple, the is­land can re­cov­er its mon­ey.