As the Government continues to face widespread criticism over the handling of contracts and the procurement process, with claims of families and friends of Government officials being given preference, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo today declared that the Government is putting its foot down on the practice.

At his press conference this afternoon, Vice President Jagdeo said that the Government has observed the influencing of contracts by some officials, especially within the regions.

He travelled to Regions Five and Six over the last few days, where he was peppered with complaints by residents. He said the practice is illegal and the Government will root it out.

“And so we are going to prohibit this, we have made it clear that Government agencies and Government officials, particularly if they are in positions of influence to steer the contracts, they must first state their interest and not participate in the bidding process, if they are some positions where they are directly involved in the adjudication in the awards in the bids and for other Government officials who are in the Regions, but have their families bidding, these too have to declare their interest,” Mr. Jagdeo said.

Mr. Jagdeo said people who are actively engaged in the practice are working against Government policy.

He also flagged the issue of persons registering multiple companies and bidding for contracts and on occasions more than one contracts are given to a single household. He described that practice as unacceptable.

“Now that we would have made that clear to both the Regional administrations in these two Regions and contractors, we intend to follow up this with technical teams to the two Regions to ensure that what we spoke of, will be faithfully observed and secondly, people are going to be trained so that they don’t have any excuse about ignorance of procurement laws of the country,” the Vice President said.

Mr. Jagdeo said he has told Regional officials that the Government wants to ensure that procurement opportunities remain within the Region, particularly for the small contractors. He also said that the procurement process needs to be above board and transparent.

According to Mr. Jagdeo, the Government is also dissatisfied with many of the shoddy works being undertaken by a number of contractors who were given Government contracts.

Although Regional officials have found themselves facing the brunt of the Vice President’s concerns, the Government has also been accused of thwarting the Procurement Process to favor contractors who have close ties to the Government and Government officials.

The Opposition has long accused the Government of creating a lopsided procurement process that appears to be favouring only the family, friends and favourites of Government officials and persons linked to the governing party.

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