Territorial At Large Representative Neville Smith has said he believes the sensitive nature of the two contracts which were recently awarded to his security company, should have resulted in the contracts being laid before the National Security Council as opposed to the House of Assembly.
Smith made the comment during Thursday’s Sitting of the House of Assembly.
The Deputy Speaker said that following the comments which were made by some Members of the House during an emergency session which was held in July to exempt him from vacating his seat, he had to clear the air regarding the nature of the contracts.
“The contract was out for tender, it came out for tender, when the contract came out the company bid on it and I’ll say the company bid on it because I am not in the day-to-day runnings of the company anymore, but I am still down as a director. When I was made aware of what took place, I brought this to the House and I think you (Speaker of the House) too could agree to what I am saying here because I try to bring it in as usual most stuff when it comes to the House we try to get it in, but sometimes we have reasons why they did not reach on time,” he said.
“I did come to the House about four or three months late, that is the first instance, but then when it came we still had to deal with COVID and all this other stuff and it had other entities the reason why it didn’t come to the House. And one of them was because of which I’m not going to talk much about because it’s again what you call a security breach. It was a sensitive document with what it was in terms of installation and stuff like that,” he further explained.
Should have been presented before the NSC
Smith said similar to how special exemptions are made to prevent some contracts from being laid before the House, the contents of his contracts which contained confidential security information, should have qualified under those circumstances.
Instead, he said he believes the contracts should have been laid before the National Security Council.
“I feel what should have happened and what could’ve been asked – just like when the doctors brought their stuff and we talked about the only doctors they have and we should have to exempt the doctors for that kind of stuff – I feel what should have happened is that we should have said look, here it is we do have business people coming to the House of Assembly doing business, we do have specialist in certain things, and here it is a specialist in security and maybe we need to say hey, this should go to the NSC instead of bringing it to the public like that,” he expressed.
The Deputy Speaker also said that the contents of the debate gave an impression that persons with businesses should not run for politics.
While admitting that he was late in bringing the matter to the House, he said despite the lateness he still followed every other protocol there was to follow.
Caribbean Security Limited – of which Smith is a director in the company – formerly entered into two contracts with the government dating back to April 8, 2021 and November 26, 2020 respectively.
The April contract valued $72,917.56, while the November contract totaled $99,285.00.