Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Carl Greenidge disagrees with the statement by Transparency International Guyana Inc (TIGI) that there is no requirement for political parties to nominate persons for the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) and said he expects parties to submit names by the restart of Parliament in October.
“Up to now the PAC has been awaiting the nominations. We haven’t yet received them but certainly between now and October I will look to see what scope there is for us to proceed,” Greenidge said in an interview with the Stabroek News on Wednesday.
“I think the reality is this: the PAC is not separate from the political parties. If I were to say to the political parties ‘I don’t care whether you nominate or not I am going to go ahead’, you realise that there isn’t a PAC without those representatives.
The Chair is not the PAC so the other members will have to agree and they are representatives of political parties,” Greenidge said.
“I would expect that the political parties will submit the names by October. I don’t perceive the names to be the problem. What I perceive to be the problem is how one selects the committee,” he said. “You need a method of selection that is not going to result in any one political party vetoing a competent and credible candidate for the Commission for political reasons. The mechanism for selection should not allow that,” said Greenidge.
“You need to be in a situation where objectively, a set of persons can sit down and select the persons. I am looking at other countries to see what it is that they do in tricky situations. One example is to take an international entity or a firm of accountants or auditors who deal with procurement and have them review the CVs, look at the experience of the persons and then choose one based purely on technical criteria and experience. In that sense it doesn’t matter who nominates, what matters is how they are chosen and that to me is the more important consideration.
That is what I will be trying to persuade the body to do expeditiously. We have to agree on a formula for selection,” he said.
“All of the statements from the Government about the need to tighten up the procurement process are meaningless unless the PPC is in place and can oversee the tendering process.
We have a situation where one company gets the hog share of construction work, one company or two companies get the bulk of the contracts for security when often they have no experience in that area,” he said.
TIGI had issued a call in an article on Tuesday in Stabroek News to have the PAC take urgent measures to nominate the five members of the Commission so that the President can make the appointments.
“There is no requirement for political parties to nominate persons to the Commission and therefore the PAC could enlist the support of key stakeholders to identify candidates. Alternatively, the PAC could advertise for the positions on the basis of which the names of five persons could be selected and presented to the President for appointment,” the TIGI article said.
The article noted that the PPC is established under Article 212 (W) of the Constitution and noted that it was in 2001 that the Constitution was amended to provide for the Commission to monitor public procurement and the related procedures to ensure that the procurement of goods and services and the execution of works are conducted in a fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost effective way.
“It is indeed disappointing that after ten years such an important constitutional body whose work it is to instil public confidence in the public procurement process is not yet in place,” TIGI said.
Presidential Adviser on Governance Gail Teixeira on July 17 said that the government is ready with its list of nominees for the PPC and accused the opposition of holding up the selection process.
Speaking to Stabroek News, Teixeira said the opposition needs to have more of an “appetite” for the talks to continue so that the establishment of the commission and other outstanding issues could be addressed.
“The three parties agreed to put up the names in June and to have those names before the Public Accounts Committee. No party has submitted names but the Alliance For Change made an announcement of their nominees,” Teixeira said. She added that the government has identified its nominees but is waiting on the opposition parties to agree on a time for the resumption of the tripartite engagement.
According to Teixeira, the commission was but one of several outstanding issues that are on the agenda for the tripartite talks. She said that there has been no follow up on the matter. “I have been reminding them but there seems to be no appetite,” she added.
Chartered accountant Christopher Ram and former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran have been nominated by the Alliance For Change to be members of the PPC
On May 10, Minister of Foreign Affairs Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett had announced in the National Assembly that that the Public Procurement Commission would be established by the end of June 2012.
She was speaking during a debate in Parliament on a motion to ratify the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Cari-forum countries and the European Union.
The Minister was at the time responding to APNU MP Deborah Backer, who, in making her contribution, had noted clauses in the EPA which called for the establishment of the commission.
