…of Cabinet
One of the major clubs the APNU and AFC battered the PPP with was about “corruption” when they were in government, was the latter’s “refusal” to set up the Public Procurement Commission (PPC), legislated since 2003. “The PPP,” the then opposition parties screamed, “did this dastardly act to allow their Cabinet to remain as the sole approver of all contracts over $15 million.”
Now, when one considers the Government gives out billions and billions of dollars’ worth of contracts every month, you’re talking about some REAL MONEY that could be skimmed off the top, said the APNU and AFC. You can’t really blame lots of folks believing where there’s smoke (of hogging a power that shoulda been delegated) there must be (the fire of) corruption. Bun dem!
So in their Manifesto, the APNU/AFC puts the promise of creating the PPC right up there among the promises they’ll carry out in THREE MONTHS if voted in, which they were! Three months came and went while the Cabinet focused on giving itself fat 50 per cent raises with no PPC insight. In fact, it wasn’t until a year and a half later, President Granger on Oct 29 finally sworn in the five-person PPC, fully three months after the names were submitted to him.
No rush here – and the “no objection” rule to contracts by Cabinet continued merrily under the APNU/AFC government. And so we had contracts such as the $320 million one for the warehouse-that-never-was-for-Pharma to Larry Singh. On the Jubilee Park, while we were assured by Minister Patterson that Procurement Rules were followed, we weren’t told if there was Cabinet “no objection” to the $150 million the Government spent. The good times rolled!
Now here we are, in the year of our lord, 2017, and the Cabinet’s still giving out “no objection” to mega-contracts – while the five-member PPC draw their collective $5 million salaries monthly!! And why the heck is that so you shriek, dear reader? Well, first the Government says they still haven’t found a space to house the PPC!! Imagine that!! A promise to be achieved in the first THREE MONTHS and almost two years later they don’t have office space??
If their story is believed, it doesn’t say much about their logistical capabilities, does it? With all those well-trained military types in every level of Government! But even though we aren’t Trinis, we know a mamaguy when we hear one, don’t we?
But hold it. “Not so!” cried the PPC whose head is Carol Corbin. “The legislation doesn’t permit us to take over the “No objection: role of the Cabinet”.
And all the time, the Cabinet – informed by the PPC – has been playing possum! Moral turpitude!
…in housing
Another area of governmental activity that APNU/AFC’d accused the PPP of “rampant corruption” was housing. New broom Keith Scott quickly downgraded the PPP’s sale-of-house-lot focus and promised to build 4000 “dream houses” with – their release trumpeted – “day-care facilities, functioning playgrounds, proximity to jobs, schools and other amenities that are consistent with improved quality of life in communities.” Well within six months Scott was moved out. Was there any fire after all the smoke?
But by then attention had shifted to CHPA, under octogenarian OR, Hamilton Green as chair. Green announced an even more ambitious $50 billion initiative for 10,000 to build housing units – including duplexes, condos and high rises! Poor folks weren’t building houses on the PPP house lots. They weren’t getting even the subsidised loans the PPP had arranged with the NBS and other banking facilities.
And Green was going to build the homes! But now he and his entire Board has been disbanded and Scott’s successor’s off to Poland.
More fire after the smoke?
…and moral blindness
Khemraj Ramjattan gloats about PPP Ministers being charged for NICIL-related fraud. But how does he explain his silence about the fraud to rent the bottom house-warehouse in Albouystown?
And your Eyewitness doesn’t mean the fall guy!
