OPR asked to probe procurement of 30 police-army posts

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) has been asked to in­ves­ti­gate the pro­cure­ment and con­struc­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s 30 joint po­lice-army posts, amid ques­tions over how con­trac­tors were se­lect­ed, the source of fund­ing and whether the projects were sub­ject­ed to a com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing process.

The com­plaint was filed yes­ter­day by at­tor­ney Ran­dall Mitchell on be­half of so­cial ac­tivist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, with for­mer prime min­is­ter and Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young al­so in­struct­ed in the mat­ter.

In the let­ter to Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Bev­er­ly Khan, Mitchell asked the OPR to ur­gent­ly ex­am­ine the “com­plete pro­cure­ment record” for the ini­tia­tive and de­ter­mine whether the awards and com­mence­ment of con­struc­tion com­plied with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act and its reg­u­la­tions.

The com­plaint comes days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment would es­tab­lish 30 joint po­lice-army posts across T&T as part of its na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy.

Con­struc­tion of the posts has al­ready be­come the sub­ject of po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy, af­ter works at the Ed­die Hart Grounds in Tacarigua were halt­ed by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC). Mitchell’s com­plaint cit­ed me­dia re­ports that a pri­vate con­trac­tor be­gan lay­ing a foun­da­tion at Ed­die Hart with­out the pri­or knowl­edge or ap­proval of the cor­po­ra­tion. It said work­ers sub­se­quent­ly moved to a site at Grand Bazaar, while foun­da­tions had re­port­ed­ly al­ready been com­plet­ed in Tarou­ba.

Mitchell ar­gued that de­spite con­struc­tion be­gin­ning at sev­er­al lo­ca­tions, there was no pub­licly avail­able in­for­ma­tion iden­ti­fy­ing the procur­ing en­ti­ty, source of fund­ing, pro­cure­ment method, ten­der­ing process, con­trac­tors se­lect­ed, eval­u­a­tions un­der­tak­en or the cost of the over­all pro­gramme.

The com­plaint lists six spe­cif­ic grounds which Ever­s­ley wants in­ves­ti­gat­ed. Among them is the claim that no pub­lic ad­ver­tise­ment, in­vi­ta­tion to ten­der, pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise or oth­er com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment process has been iden­ti­fied.

It al­so ques­tions whether a non-com­pet­i­tive, lim­it­ed, ur­gent, emer­gency or na­tion­al-se­cu­ri­ty pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dure was used and, if so, the ba­sis and ap­proval for that ap­proach.

Ques­tions were al­so raised about the iden­ti­ties and ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship of con­trac­tors and sub­con­trac­tors, the process used to se­lect them and what eval­u­a­tion and due dili­gence were un­der­tak­en.

Mitchell specif­i­cal­ly asked the OPR to in­ves­ti­gate “the truth or oth­er­wise” of ques­tions sur­round­ing whether a (Mooti­lal) Ramhit-owned or re­lat­ed com­pa­ny was in­volved. The com­plaint al­so seeks in­for­ma­tion on the es­ti­mat­ed and award­ed cost of each post, the to­tal val­ue of the pro­gramme, its fund­ing source and the rel­e­vant con­tracts or award no­tices.

An­oth­er is­sue raised is whether the 30 posts were treat­ed as a sin­gle pro­cure­ment pro­gramme or di­vid­ed in­to sep­a­rate con­tracts and whether any such di­vi­sion af­fect­ed com­pe­ti­tion or the pro­cure­ment method used.

“These mat­ters raise rea­son­able con­cerns as to whether the pro­cure­ment was con­duct­ed law­ful­ly and con­sis­tent­ly with the re­quire­ments of ac­count­abil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy, fair­ness and val­ue for mon­ey,” Mitchell wrote.

He asked the OPR to de­ter­mine the re­spon­si­ble pub­lic body and ex­am­ine the ad­ver­tis­ing and bid­ding process, eval­u­a­tion, con­trac­tor iden­ti­ties and own­er­ship and con­tract val­ues.

Mitchell al­so urged the reg­u­la­tor to act quick­ly be­cause con­struc­tion was re­port­ed­ly con­tin­u­ing or im­mi­nent.

“As con­struc­tion is re­port­ed to be con­tin­u­ing or im­mi­nent, I ask that the mat­ter be treat­ed ur­gent­ly and that the Of­fice take any ap­pro­pri­ate step with­in its pow­ers to en­sure com­pli­ance pend­ing the out­come of its in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” he said. The at­tor­ney re­quest­ed writ­ten ac­knowl­edge­ment of the com­plaint, a ref­er­ence num­ber and con­fir­ma­tion of what ac­tion the OPR pro­pos­es to take.

The com­plaint was made un­der Sec­tion 41 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015. Mitchell said Ever­s­ley was bring­ing the mat­ter as a mem­ber of the pub­lic con­cerned about the ex­pen­di­ture or com­mit­ment of pub­lic funds and the ab­sence of pub­licly avail­able in­for­ma­tion on how the works were pro­cured.