Recent decisions highlighted by Opposition Senator Dr Margaret Rose indicate that cancelling a public procurement exercise does not necessarily prevent the Office of Procurement Regulation from examining what happened before the cancellation.<\/p>\n
Rose highlighted the development during the Opposition’s September 10 press conference while discussing three 2026 challenge proceedings involving Amalgamated Security Services Limited and Paria.<\/p>\n
According to Rose, three challenges were filed on March 25, 2026, under the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act.<\/p>\n
She said the procurement exercises were cancelled the following day.<\/p>\n
Rose said arguments were subsequently raised that because the exercises had been cancelled, there was nothing remaining for the OPR to investigate.<\/p>\n
However, according to Rose’s account of the decisions, the OPR determined in all three matters that it retained jurisdiction.<\/p>\n
She said one proceeding subsequently resulted in findings of breaches and non-compliance, while the evidence did not establish the alleged breaches in the other two.<\/p>\n
Rose described the decisions as an important development for public accountability because cancellation cannot automatically be used to prevent scrutiny of conduct occurring before a procurement exercise was stopped.<\/p>\n
She summarised the principle simply: “Cancellation is not a cure.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OPR Decisions Signal Cancelling Public Procurement Does Not Necessarily End Scrutiny Of Earlier Irregularities<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-trinidad-and-tobago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}