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Last Sunday, I traced the perils of having the state enterprises unrestrained by diligent and timely oversight by the constitutionally established Public Account [Enterprises] Committee (the PA[E]C) and I referred to that committee being handicapped, due to the late submission of annual reports and other financial information to it.
The PA[E]C is comprised of members of Parliament—or one might cynically say compromised by such a composition. Its lack of diligence is one half of the crumbled state enterprise oversight function.
Copyright: Office of the Parliament 2025.
The other half is the systemic weakness bedeviling the preparation of information for the PA[E]C and probably many other public bodies. I elaborate this week on that other half.
However, before that elaboration, it is necessary to restate that for decades political office holders of both main parties have had the state enterprise sector available to them under their unrestrained and largely unaccountable control.
This permits them, when in government, easily to engage in facilitation of partisan political purposes.
(via HDC.)
I restate the perils of the state enterprise sector in order to highlight how, just last week, the continuing reality of this situation was reflected again in two reports respectively involving each of the two main political parties.
To the intended likely discredit of the recently defeated People’s National Movement (PNM) Government, the new Minister of Energy Dr Roodal Moonilal MP disclosed “strange hirings” in the energy sector including “the wife of a former minister at a state company” as “an advisor” and a defeated politician as “a consultant”. (See the Trinidad Express, Tuesday last, 24 June 2025.)
Regarding the return of the United National Congress (UNC) to government, there is no need to rake over old incidents which arose from the last time the UNC was in government.
(via Facebook.)
Perhaps however, there is need to respond and clear the air about a report concerning the chairmanship of the National Gas Company (NGC) from the seat of which the not even month-old new chairman Dr Randy Ramadhar Singh has reportedly resigned.
There were denials from “NGC sources” but the Trinidad Guardian on Sunday last, reported that it had been reliably informed that “there was a dispute between Ramadhar Singh [the new NGC chairman] and a special adviser to the government over a contract.” Is the media leaving that there?
At the time of writing last week’s column, I had the benefit of re-reading the commendably candid statements of procurement regulator Beverly Khan, made on the occasion of the laying in Parliament in September 2024 of the very first report of the Office of Procurement Regulator (OPR).
(Office of the President.)
(See the Trinidad Guardian, 8 September 2024.)
Even though it was the very first report of the OPR, it was approximately nine months late. The Procurement Regulator laid out “the multiplicity of challenges” which delayed the timely completion of the report. These challenges were grounded in the absence of personnel trained and committed to providing timely information as well as the absence of reliable data.
Basically, the report had to be delayed in order to try and obtain more reliable data.
Here are two of the fundamental comments contained in the OPR report, the first regarding personnel: “Despite being in the works for over five years, the public service was unprepared for the implementation of the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act.”
Secondly, regarding the availability of data: “The office has had to grapple with several complexities in the acquisition, consolidation and validation of the data necessary to facilitate a comprehensive analysis for reporting purposes”.
The OPR also referred to “the convergence of factors” that “made data reconciliation and validation difficult, with adverse consequences for data quality to the extent that the data reported for the period was deemed unreliable”.
Obvious troubling questions arise out of the situation affecting mandatory reporting to an oversight body while the state enterprise sector remains for both political parties a convenient and often lucrative partisan political tool.
In addition, the issue of lack of available or reliable data is not new as other commentators have pointed out. I will remind readers of its broader implications in a future column.
Meanwhile, in the absence of any reliable data it remains wide open for dissembling politicians to tout their myth as fact.
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Martin G Daly SC is a prominent attorney-at-law. He is a former Independent Senator and past president of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago.
He is chairman of the Pat Bishop Foundation and a steelpan music enthusiast.
