'Cabinet decision fostering corruption' – Christie

Thursday, December 02, 2010

CONTRACTOR General Greg Christie has challenged Cabinet's decision to give a three-month moratorium that permits uncertified contractors to bid for and receive Government contracts as "flying in the face of the law and fostering corruption".

Information Minister Daryl Vaz, at a post-Cabinet press briefing last Wednesday, said that the eligibility period for the award of contracts to all contractors registered with the National Contracts Commission (NCC) had been extended to February 28, 2011. He said Cabinet had issued the mandate specifying that all NCC-registered contractors should be viewed qualified up to the stated date, even if the period of registration had expired.

But in a statement yesterday the contractor general said his office was "gravely concerned about the legality and propriety of the reported Cabinet policy directive".

He pointed out that based on Section 23 (A-J) of the Contractor General Act, which gives the NCC the exclusive authority under the law to register Government of Jamaica contractors and to make all determinations associated with the process, the Cabinet, by its directive, was "usurping the lawful authority of the NCC".

Said Christie: "The NCC is an independent statutory commission which does not report to the Cabinet or to any ministry of Government and, accordingly, cannot be lawfully dictated to by the Government.

"In the alternative, if the NCC decides to act on the policy directive of the Cabinet and approve and implement the moratorium, its actions too could be called into question in a court of law."

The contractor general also noted that "the prescribed form" of all NCC contractor registration certificates, which are currently in existence, confines the validity period of a contractor registration to one year with absolutely no provision for the type of 'extension' that the Cabinet's policy moratorium is purportedly attempting to prescribe.