Attorney General Anil Nandlall has announced that the Government will be moving to review the Public Procurement processes, the Procurement Act and the standard form contracts that are currently being used in the public sector. He said the move is in a bid to provide greater cover to the Government in the event of non-compliance by contractors.

The Attorney General has also stated that the Government will also be reviewing current trends of engineers and supervisors who support a contractor’s variation in cost.

Speaking during his weekly “Issues In the News” programme on Tuesday night, Mr. Nandlall said from all indications, engineers and supervisors tend to align their interest more with the contractors than with the state that employs them.

“Instead of preventing and resisting attempts at variations in contracts that would inevitably result in an upward movement in the contract price, the engineer and  or supervisors support the contractors request for an extension, and I can’t say why, but engineer and or, supervisor are paid based upon that increase, there renumeration package is tied to a variation that necessarily increases the contract price and perhaps that is an incentive to give support, we have to ensure that that state of affair is reviewed,’ Mr. Nandlall noted.

He said contractors seem to be rewarded rather than be penalized for a variation in their contracts, adding that the responsibility of the engineer is to prevent the variation from happening.

He said there appears to be some financial gain for those involved in supporting the contractors.

“And one cannot discount that one of the reasons that may be influencing that posture is a financial one because when the variation is granted the supervisor contractor or the engineer’s contract is also extended. So, they receive renumeration that is commensurate with the extension of the contract that must be looked it,” Mr. Nandlall noted.

In addition, Mr. Nandlall said the review will center around making provisions of the contracts more stringent so that contractors are held more accountable for their conduct for breaching their contractual obligations.

“We will review the regime of remedies that flow when there is a breach and we will strengthen the regime of remedies so as to offer to the state greater protection when there are breaches of non-compliance. Significantly, the review will also be focused on the role of the engineer or supervisor of these contracts, these engineers and or supervisors are paid huge sums of money to monitor and evaluate the performance of the contract for and on behalf of the state, they are supposed to police the contracts and ensure that when there are breaches, these breaches are reported and remedied under the terms of the contract,” Mr. Nandlall stated.

The Attorney General said the review is also necessary since the contracts that the state currently uses are not the most modern model contracts, and that they must be revised to be in compliance with the International Federation of Consulting Engineers models.

According to Mr. Nandlall, a recent CCJ decision on contract law regarding the sale of the Tower Hotel, also necessitates the review.

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