Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Chairman, Jermaine Figueira yesterday called on President Irfaan Ali to swear in the members of the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) who were identified months ago.
Figueira’s call comes two months after the National Assembly unanimously voted in support of the nominees put forward by the PAC. At an engagement earlier this month, President Ali responding to a question from Stabroek News said that the PPC members will “very soon” be administered their instrument to function.
Figueira, at the start of yesterday’s PAC sitting, publicly called on Ali to do what is expected of him constitutionally and swear in the nominees for the commission.
“On behalf of the PAC I would like to make the call on His Excellency to swear in the commissioners of the Public Procurement Commission so they can execute their constitutional duties that the Guyanese public is expecting them to do,” he said.
Figueira underscored that given the importance of the constitutional body it can no longer be held in abeyance. He added that as Chairman of the PAC, many persons have expressed their dissatisfaction to him that the commission has not been functioning. Piggy-backing on the Chairman’s concerns, PAC member, Ganesh Mahipaul, said that it is disheartening that they still have to wait for the PPC members to be sworn in. He stated that despite the contentious positions in the National Assembly, the country witnessed the President administering the oath of office to Members of the Natural Resource Fund Board swiftly but he did not do the same for the PPC, which enjoyed the House’s full support.
Mahipaul said that since the PAC worked diligently to arrive at an agreement on the names for the commission and got two-thirds parliamentary support for the nominees, one would have expected they would have received their instruments to function by now.
“I thought by now we could have had a PPC where contractors and suppliers could have expressed their dissatisfaction in terms of them feeling they were not treated fairly by the public procurement system,” the PAC member said. He argued that the PAC recognized the importance of the PPC and urgently considered the names of the incoming commissioners in a bid to ensure transparency and accountability are maintained and that the guardrails of democracy remain in place. The names of Pauline Chase, Joel Bhagwandin, Rajnarine Singh, Diana Rajcumar and Berkley Wickham to constitute the PPC were approved during a sitting of the National Assembly on April 13.
The Constitution provides that, “Subject to paragraph (2), members of the Commission shall be appointed for three years and shall be eligible for re-appointment, for one other term of office, not earlier than three years after the end of their first term. (2) Of those members first appointed, two shall hold office for four years.” The first PPC was established in October 2016, which was more than 13 years after the Constitution was amended to cater for the procurement oversight body. The life of that Commission ended in October 2019 but then-President David Granger intervened, extending the tenures of two commissioners by one year to facilitate the transition period.
There has been no PPC since October of 2020 and billions of dollars’ worth of public works’ contracts have since been awarded.
