An examination of the recent reports of the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) on complaints before it has underlined how easy it is for corruption to take over the tendering system and for unjust contract awards to be made to the detriment of public safety and the monies of the people of this country.
In these circumstances, one would have expected the PPC to act decisively to interdict what are clearly violations of the Procurement Act. It has not. Evidently, with the majority of the members of the PPC having been selected by the government, they recognise loyalty to it rather than to the actual task before them. The highly paid commissioners have also dawdled on the job. As full-time members of the PPC, it took six months – six months – for them to arrive at a Summary of Findings on the most scandalous award of a pump station contract to Mikhail Rodrigues’ Tepui Inc without even recommending a termination of it.
The corruption revolves around the Evaluation Committees that are appointed by the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board ( NPTAB). These committees are intended to evaluate all of the tenders submitted for any given project. These projects can be worth in the range of $1b and more so the stakes are high. The members of these committees are therefore prime targets for corrupt approaches. They are also available – as may likely be the case with Tepui – to instructions from members of the government and affiliates of the ruling party to make certain selections by cooking the evaluation process. These committee members are not known to the public so they can get away with almost anything including illicit enrichment and no one will be the wiser about their conspicuous spending or a new SUV.
The government will smugly say it is following the rules and it is up to the NPTAB and the PPC to straighten out matters. The informed public knows very well how things are done in this country.
A call for proof in the Tepui matter will no doubt be made by the government. The proof lies in the tenders that were submitted and the finding of which bids were responsive and which were not. The Evaluation Report records twenty-six bids as having been received of which, half, that is, thirteen bids, were deemed “substantially responsive”. A full-scale criminal investigation should be launched of this matter to determine how Tepui, which did not enter a “substantially responsive” bid, could have been selected for a $865m project. The 26 bids – many by experienced bidders – and accompanying documents should be sequestered for the investigation and the evaluators should be carefully questioned about their choices.
All of these failures are happening under the NPTAB whose members are appointed by the government and who are the ones responsible for selecting members of the evaluation committees. There must also be a shake up of the NPTAB whose chairman has been a longstanding senior official of the Ministry of Finance.
Another problem the government faces in establishing its credibility in procurement matters is the failure of the NPTAB and the various procuring agencies to respond to requests by the PPC for information. Responses were either late, incomplete or none at all.
As an example, on October 6, 2023, the NPTAB was asked to submit the following information within five days on the Tepui bid:
i. a copy of –
a. the tender document,
b. all tenders submitted,
c. the Report of the Evaluation Committee, and
d. all other such relevant documents touching and concerning the said tender; and
ii. a copy of the contract award;
iii. date of publication of the contract award; and
iv. confirmation whether S. 39(3) of the Procurement Act. Cap. 73:05 was complied with.
A similar request was made of the procuring entity, the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) of the Ministry of Agriculture by way of letter on October 6, 2023.
On November 1st, 2023, weeks later, the PPC said that the NPTAB submitted to the commission:
i. a copy of the Evaluation Report, and
ii. the bid submitted by the subject awarded contractor, Tepui Group Inc.
There was no response to the other requested information.
There being no response from the NDIA, a reminder was sent by way of
letter dated December 4th, 2023. NDIA responded by way of letter dated December 7th, 2023, and received by the commission on December 13th, 2023, that is, more than two months after the initial request. It submitted a copy of the-
i. tender document,
ii. contract, and
iii. contract award.
There was no response to the other requested information.
Even more outrageous was the refusal of the Ministry of Local Government to provide any information at all to the PPC as it relates to the examination of bids to the extension of the Fort Wellington Secondary School. That points to the internal disdain and resistance that has been cultivated in government to propriety and scrupulousness in the award of contracts. None of the sanctimonious utterings from anyone in government will change the view that the current outlook is to award contracts in an unaccountable manner.
In the PPC reports there were examples where the NPTAB failed to indicate the date of the publishing of the contract which is important to aggrieved bidders who then have five days to enter an objection.
In a complaint brought by M S Investments over food rations for the prisons, clear errors were made by the Evaluation Committee to the extent that the PPC recommended termination of the contract, an option it did not consider when it examined the Tepui fiasco.
While it took eight months for the PPC to throw out a complaint by R Kissoon Contracting Services over a bid for D&I pumps, it was discovered that the Evaluation Committee had made mistakes in its examination of two guidelines. Furthermore, the contract for the winning contractor was signed on January 1st, 2023. Which government agency ever signs a contract on New Year’s Day and is that legal?
These were only some of the highlights uncovered by the PPC in response to complaints but they are enough for the government to make radical changes to purge the public tendering system of corruption. High on the agenda must be a vetting system for the pool of NPTAB evaluators and the tender board and procuring agencies must cooperate in investigations and maintain a comprehensive repository of information in the event of an investigation.
