A formal complaint backed by opposition political figures has landed at the doorstep of Trinidad and Tobago’s Office of the Procurement Regulator, calling for an immediate investigation into the public procurement process for a major national security infrastructure project: the construction of 30 new joint army-police outposts across the country.
Dated August 7, 2026, the complaint was submitted by attorney Randall Mitchell, a former government minister from the opposition People’s National Movement (PNM), on behalf of public activist Wendell Eversley. Senior Counsel Stuart Young, who also serves as an opposition Member of Parliament and former prime minister, provided formal instruction for the case. To support their claims, complainants attached a copy of a August 7 front-page news report from the *Express* titled “Row erupts over police post”, which first publicized growing controversy around the initiative.
The project in question was first announced by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar on August 3 this year, as a core expansion of the government’s national security strategy. According to local media reports, construction work on the outposts has already begun or is set to start imminently — yet nearly all key details of the procurement process have remained hidden from public view, the complaint argues.
In the letter addressed directly to Procurement Regulator Beverly Khan, the legal team formally filed the complaint under Section 41 of the 2015 Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act, the country’s core legislation governing public spending on contracts. Mitchell emphasized that Eversley filed the challenge as a concerned citizen, focused on the lack of transparency around how public funds are being committed to the project.
“Under existing law, the Office of the Procurement Regulator is explicitly empowered to investigate any public complaint alleging suspected irregularities or breaches of procurement regulations,” Mitchell noted in the correspondence.
The complaint outlines six distinct grounds justifying a full investigation, centering on the complete absence of critical public information about the process. To date, the government has not publicly named which public body is leading the procurement, identified the source of funding for the project, disclosed what procurement method was used, released any records of tender advertisements or competitive bidding processes, named the selected contractors, or revealed the total value of the program or the cost of each individual outpost.
Even if the government used a limited, non-competitive bidding process justified by urgency, emergency, or national security needs, the complaint argues that no public explanation or formal approval for this exception has been released. The legal team also raised unanswered questions about the identity and beneficial ownership of selected contractors and subcontractors, the due diligence and evaluation processes used to select firms, and lingering questions about potential conflicts of interest related to a specific private company linked to the work.
Additional unaddressed concerns include whether the 30-outpost project was tendered as a single contract or split into multiple awards, and whether any intentional division was used to avoid competitive procurement rules. All of these gaps add up to reasonable suspicion that the process may not have complied with legal requirements for transparency, accountability, integrity, fairness, and value for public money, the letter argues.
The legal team has called on the regulator to obtain and review the full, complete procurement record for the project, to verify all key details from responsible entities to contract values, and confirm whether the award of contracts and start of construction complied with the 2015 Act and accompanying regulations.
Given that construction is already underway or set to begin shortly, Mitchell has urged the regulator to prioritize the complaint as an urgent matter, and to take all available regulatory action to ensure compliance with the law while the full investigation is completed. The letter also requests formal written acknowledgement of the complaint, a official reference number, and confirmation of what next steps the regulator plans to take.