On November 8, 2021, a $346m contract was awarded to St8ment Investment Inc for the construction of a primary school at Bamia, Linden. Questions were immediately raised about this award by the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) as the company in question comprised entertainment promoters who have largely operated under the Hits and Jams label and others who have engaged in the promotion of sports. Further, all of the principals of the company have had longstanding ties with the PPP/C government. The members of the NPTAB were singlehandedly appointed by the government and the committees evaluating bids and making decisions were enlisted by those at the head of the procurement board. The picture is then pellucid. The PPP/C government is in full charge of the procurement process and any protestations that it is really independent evaluation committees making the decisions is nothing but piffle.
From the outset one would have expected that the bidders for a contract for the construction of a school would be construction or engineering firms, not prospectors seeking a large contract and then ostensibly hiring someone versed in construction. In projects of this type the tender document composed by the procuring agency should have required evidence of construction ability as which point St8ment Investment and other bidders would have been instantly eliminated. The procuring agency is the Georgetown-based Ministry of Local Government when it ideally should have been the Region 10 administration.
When the contract was awarded in 2021, the project was expected to run for 20 months with the new school being able to open its doors in the latter part of 2024. Eleven months have elapsed and the project has not advanced anywhere near the halfway point and work has been stalled for weeks. The Region 10 administration which has been examining developments is rightly concerned about whether deadlines will be met.
In response to the situation, the September 18 Sunday Stabroek reported Rawle Ferguson, one of the principals of St8ment Investment as saying that he was unaware of works being stalled. He said that he would have to “make some calls” and promised to provide an update. Mr Ferguson would later deny that works have stalled even though construction had not been in evidence for weeks. He however admitted that the company had “scaled down work” whatever that means in the context of public procurement and the specific terms set out in the contract. Mr Ferguson also ventured that works will be back to normal once “payments are sorted out” which suggested that there had been some sort of dispute over the rate of disbursements.
The Minister of Local Government, Nigel Dharamlall was equally hazy about what was occurring despite the fact that this matter had been in the news for days and his ministry was the procuring agency. He told yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek “I am aware that the works are behind schedule but I cannot say if it is stalled or anything. I have been informed that the works are not going as planned and so I asked that there be a technical meeting between the contractors”.
He said that the meeting is scheduled for today among engineers, contractors and consultants along with other officials and that after the meeting the ministry would be in a position to say definitively what was happening with the project.
One expects that the public will be provided with a full update on this project and whether it has met contractual commitments and if not why not and whether penalties have been assessed. One must also question whether the consultant on this project has been reporting regularly to the procuring agency given that the minister appeared not to have specific information on the state of play.
Billions of dollars in monies belonging to the people of this country are being handed out by this government on large and small infrastructural projects. Value for money is expected and this is intrinsically tied to whether the best contractors are being chosen by evaluation committees. The recent selection of Kares Engineering Inc for the construction of the North Ruimveldt Secondary School has again raised concerns about what the NPTAB evaluation committees are doing. Former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran has already pointed out that the procuring agency, the NPTAB and Cabinet are all at fault for allowing this project to proceed without the poor performance of the company on the Kato school project being taken account of. Questions were recently also raised about the stalling of work on a pump station at Adventure, Corentyne.
The decisions made by the evaluation committees for the Bamia and North Ruimveldt schools should be examined by the recently constituted Public Procurement Commission (PPC) for a determination of whether the tender documents advanced by the procuring agencies were acceptable and whether the tender evaluation committees acted in accordance with their mandate.
A major part of the problem the country faces with ill-equipped contractors is the continuing absence of an engineer’s act. For decades, both PPP/C and PNCR-led governments have refused to ensure that an act that enables the registration and licensing of engineers was in place. Such an act would have certainly enabled qualified engineering and construction firms to bid and would have weeded out the unqualified. With its still unimpressive legislative achievements, one wonders about the PPP/C government’s plan for the engineer’s act given the exponential rise in the number of public infrastructure projects and the attendant spending. In November of 2020, it was reported that Public Works Minister Juan Edghill had delivered a draft Engineering Bill for a Cabinet Sub-Committee’s consideration. Nearly two years on, there has been no further word on this. This is not entirely surprising.
