Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Near­ly two years af­ter be­com­ing op­er­a­tional, the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR) is still not ful­ly equipped to fa­cil­i­tate the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Bev­er­ly Khan told a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) that progress is be­ing made but the abil­i­ty of pri­vate com­pa­nies to en­gage pub­lic ser­vices for pro­vid­ing goods and ser­vices is hin­dered by the cum­ber­some process­es in re­cent­ly en­act­ed leg­is­la­tion.

“The sys­tem as it is now op­er­at­ing is not fa­cil­i­tat­ing ease of do­ing busi­ness be­cause the en­vi­ron­ment in which the sys­tem is op­er­at­ing was not ready for it. That is be­ing very hon­est,” Khan said when she ap­peared be­fore the JSC yes­ter­day. She said a ma­jor hur­dle pre­vent­ing the OPR from meet­ing the de­mands of busi­ness­es is a lack of ad­e­quate hu­man re­sources.

“The OPR in it­self went in­to full procla­ma­tion with­out an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture that al­lowed to op­er­a­tionalise all el­e­ments of the act and our func­tions un­der the act, so we do not have the ad­e­quate staff but we have been do­ing our work,” Khan ex­plained, adding that the OPR has been op­er­at­ing with half of the staff re­quired.

“We cur­rent­ly have a staffing of 78 of which 58 are filled po­si­tions. The ear­ly es­ti­mates show that we would need to at least, at a min­i­mum, dou­ble that staff,” she said.

In re­sponse to a ques­tion from JSC mem­ber Kei­th Scot­land, SC, Khan said there is an un­der­tak­ing to in­crease staff with the nec­es­sary pro­fes­sion­als by the end of the year. She added that the is­sues are be­ing ad­dressed and are not ir­reg­u­lar when re­form­ing the pro­cure­ment sys­tem.

The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act of 2015, which was ful­ly pro­claimed in 2023, deals with the re­ten­tion and dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty, in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance. Khan said the OPR has en­coun­tered re­sis­tance from in­di­vid­u­als in the pub­lic ser­vice who op­pose change and while there is in­for­ma­tion avail­able on how to use the sys­tem, many choose not to read the guide­lines. She told the JSC, com­pli­ance with OPR reg­u­la­tions re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge through­out the pub­lic ser­vice.

“There is a dearth of peo­ple with pro­cure­ment knowl­edge in the coun­try to be­gin with and those that are there are mov­ing around to those who will pay them high­er re­mu­ner­a­tion so they move fair­ly quick­ly and then those be­low them who would have been train­ing, they are very re­luc­tant to take up the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“When they look at penal­ty and fines im­posed on a named pro­cure­ment of­fi­cer, a lot of them have said to us they don’t want to be part of us,” she said.

Khan al­so flagged the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for fail­ing to pro­vide a his­to­ry of its con­tract re­port­ing over the last year.

“In in­stances where we did get a re­port, it was gross­ly in­ad­e­quate so the OPR, we have tak­en a stance where we un­der­stand the chal­lenges on the ground and we want to be ac­com­mo­dat­ing but we will not ac­com­mo­date peo­ple break­ing the law, we will not do that,” she said.

Khan main­tained that fund­ing is not an is­sue af­fect­ing the OPR.