COLLAPSE of a staircase at Torrington Park housing scheme in St Andrew, which easily could have resulted in a major tragedy, provides another example of the boomerang effect plaguing the public procurement process.

News that a woman, Ms Althea McIntosh, was injured when the stairs collapsed on Sunday has naturally raised serious safety concerns. Other residents had to be rescued from their apartments by firefighters, and as many as 20, we are told, have been displaced.

According to one person, the situation could have been much worse had children been playing on and underneath the staircase, as often happens.

Residents say that the building, which is decades old, has never been serviced. Its deplorable state had been brought to the attention of the authorities and should have been rectified a year ago.

Their Member of Parliament, Mr Mark Golding, the Opposition leader, corroborated their claim and said that he has been writing to the prime minister and the housing ministry about it. He also said the authorities wrote to him last Wednesday telling him that “the procurement commission blocked it from going through as an emergency procurement, and said the contract had to go to limited tender”.

However, late Monday evening the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation countered Mr Golding’s account, saying that he falsely suggested that the ministry had been tardy in moving to address infrastructural challenges.

According to the ministry, several efforts were made to have the required corrective work commence. It also outlined a series of steps taken to address the matter that eventually led to the Public Procurement Commission approving the work on November 18.

Unfortunately, the matter has been dragged into the arena of partisan politics, while the residents of the housing scheme are inconvenienced and worried about the overall safety of the building. But this matter could have already been addressed had the procurement process been more efficient.

We reiterate that no one can challenge the value of the procurement policy as it is designed to thwart corruption; maximise efficiency in procurement; and ensure fairness, integrity, and public confidence.

However, this perfectly logical push for transparency and accountability is backfiring because of inordinate delays.

Last year, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton pointed to what he believes is insufficient capacity at the level of people managing the process. Dr Tufton suggested that mistakes by those in charge, and an inadequacy of clarity regarding procurement, add substantially to delays.

He also suggested that some public sector workers were shying away from engaging in the procurement process out of fear that they may be accused of wrongdoing. So the fear of reputational damage, he argued, “is greater than the need to solve the problem that the procurement process is intended to solve”.

At the time, the minister also called for greater attention to training so as to deal with the challenges.

On Monday, the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation reminded us that the Government is undertaking a general review of the procurement process, with a view towards increasing efficiency.

That can’t happen too soon. But again, whatever is done, there needs to be balance to avoid the debilitating effect of even the perception of corruption.