Latest update December 4th, 2024 2:40 AM
Employment costs for Public Procurement Commission up by $115M- 2023 Annual Report
Kaieteur News- The Public Procurement Commission (PPC) in 2023 paid just over $175.7M in employment costs, a $115M increase from the previous year.
According to the Audited Financial Statements of the PPC for the year ended December 31, 2023, the Procurement Commission received a government subvention that year of $253,161,486, compared with $199,766,955 in 2022.
The Public Procurement Commission in Georgetown.
The greatest portion of this subvention last year went towards employment costs, while another hefty payment of $19.7M was paid for the rental of the office building that houses the PPC on New Garden Street, Georgetown.
According to the Financial Statements, which were recently tabled in the National Assembly, the Public Procurement Commission also incurred $16.3M in training costs. Kaieteur News understands that the training sessions were facilitated countrywide by the legal and operational teams of the Commission.
It should be noted that during the Consideration of the 2024 Budget Estimates, questions were raised in Parliament by former Minister David Patterson, regarding the operations of the Commission.
He was informed that since the PPC was re-established in 2022, four investigations were conducted, while only two reports were completed at the time. Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Gail Teixeira was keen to note that the Commission can only conduct investigations into matters reported. She however later revealed that a dozen requests for investigations were received by the PPC between July 2022 and December 2023.
Teixeira said: “The present PPC, as far as I understand, is responding to the requests they get, the availability of documents, etcetera to investigate and they have said here, they have completed four investigations, they have two that they have published and that is between July 2022, when they were appointed and December 2023. And if my calculation of months is right, they did better than the original and the first PPC.”
While she accused the former PPC of merely completing two investigations between 2018 and 2020, Patterson contended that six probes were in fact conducted. Turning his attention to total budgetary allocations since 2022, which amount to a total of 435.1M ($199.8M in 2022, $235.3M in 2023), Patterson asked for an explanation, given that only two reports have been completed. He also questioned the salary received by the Chairman and members of the Commission.
To this end, Minister Teixeira said it was public knowledge that Chair of the PPC, Pauline Chase is paid $15.6M annually, along with telephone, entertainment and travel allowances and another $3.9M for security. Her total wages and salary on an annual basis is $20M.
Meanwhile, the Deputy Chair, Berkley Wickham earns $1.1M monthly, along with a traveling allowance of $140,760, $120,000 for entertainment and $240,000 for telephone allowance, annually, similar to what is received by Chase. On an annual basis, the Deputy Chair bags $13.7M. The other three members of the Commission are: Joel Bhagwandin, Rajnarine Singh and Diana Rajkumar, are paid $900M each, monthly, along with other allowances. Teixeira said the total wage bill for the commissioners amount to $61.2M and $6.6M for benefits and allowance.
With only a minor number of reports completed by the body, Patterson had questioned whether this was value for money.
Minister Teixeira in her response pointed out that the PPC has 13 functions under Article 212 of the Constitution, one of which is investigations. In addition, she noted that the Public Procurement Act also outlines other roles of the body in compliance with the constitution.
Consequently, she said, “Do we think we are getting value for money? Yes, in the anti-corruption field and in being able to investigate and have an authority that is constitutional and independent of the government…the money is well used because it allows for that oversight function and being able to monitor what is going on.”
The minister therefore noted that it was disingenuous for the MP to only question the number of reports rather than its other functions.
(Employment costs for Public Procurement Commission jumps by $115M- 2023 Annual Report)
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