Plans to enhance Smith Barcadere appears to have been resuscitated.
Government last month issued a tender for construction of phase one of the Smith Barcadere redevelopment project.
The tender, which was published on government’s public procurement portal in late December, is seeking quotations for the construction of a retaining wall, carpark and adjoining office and restroom facility. The tender deadline is today, Jan. 17.
Details limited
Attempts to get further information on the plans from the government’s Public Works Department, which is in charge of the redevelopment, have proved futile.
The planned phases for the project and its overall cost have not been provided.
George Town South MLA Barbara Conolly told the Cayman Compass, in an emailed statement on the project, that she too could not provide further details on the plans as they were now with the Ministry of Commerce, Planning and Infrastructure.
However, she said she is pleased that government is now in a position for phase 1 of the project to go out to tender.
“My committee and I have been working with the Ministry of Commerce, Planning and Infrastructure to develop a plan to enhance this parcel of land that Government acquired some years ago. With their assistance and the support of the Minister and the Unity
Government, I am excited that we will finally be able to commence this project,” she said.
She assured that no enhancement is being carried out on the land where the cove is situated.
“In the future, we would like to renovate the existing restrooms on that parcel, but no other enhancements are planned for that original site,” she said.
Save the Cove urges transparency
The redevelopment project currently under tender relates to the land adjacent to Smith Barcadere.
That land was purchased by government in 2016 following a public campaign by the group Save the Cove.
The group secured more than 3,000 signatures in a petition urging government to protect the cove from development after local developer Bronte submitted a planning application to build two blocks of condos on the northern part of the property.
Government stepped in and negotiated a deal to buy the property from owner TFG Cayman and the application was withdrawn. Government withdrew $5 million from the Environmental Protection Fund to buy the land.
Founding member of the Save the Cove group and beach-access activist Morne Botes said he was excited that the enhancements were being made.
However, both he and fellow Save the Cove member Taura Ebanks expressed displeasure over the lack of public information on the project.
“I do wish they had shared with the public before they actually put in the tender and got further in the process. I do hope that they’ll share with the public now and they will have an input because it is a public beach and it is for everyone to enjoy,” Botes said.
Ebanks urged the relevant authorities to make all the information around the redevelopment project public.
“It seems like every time money is being spent, the government is keeping these things quiet until they are halfway through a project, and that’s when people start to really get upset,” she said.
The last public consultation on the redevelopment ended with the redesign of the proposed plans.
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In May, salvagers, marine surveyors and other contractors attended a workshop where they learned about a project that was slated to be the Recovery and Development Agency’s biggest yet: removing more than 200 derelict boats from the waters around the territory.
Starting in the summer, the selected contractor was expected to break down and discard boats stranded in seven areas.
But now, the tendering process for the project has been cancelled.
“After careful consideration of all factors, there are elements of the project that affect the ability to progress into the next stage of the procurement process. In the absence of specific timelines for the resolution of these matters, it has been decided not to seek an additional extension to the validity of the tenders” from Nov. 15, according to a Dec. 4 statement on the RDA’s website.
RDA Head of Communications Colene Penn declined to elaborate on why the tenders were cancelled or how much headway the RDA had made before scrapping the project.
“The statement is our communication on the matter, so all information relevant to the cancellation is included in the statement,” Ms. Penn said.
Though the RDA — which was established in April 2018 to lead the recovery effort for five years — reportedly has spent as much as $400,000 per month on operating costs, it has struggled to complete major projects, apparently because of a funding shortage amid tensions with the central government.
As of the second anniversary of Irma in September it had completed only four projects worth about $2.5 million and reported spending just $2.3 million more on contracts for eight others that were in the works.
The RDA has not fully explained its funding situation, however, and RDA CEO Paul Bayly has repeatedly declined interviews with the Beacon.
‘Shrugged their shoulders’
Captain Raman Bala, acting director of the Virgin Islands Shipping Registry, learned that the tenders had been cancelled recently while visiting the RDA’s offices to check on another project, he said.
An RDA official mentioned to him that the agency would not be proceeding with the boat removal, and when Mr. Bala asked why, the official “shrugged their shoulders, smiled and left,” Mr. Bala said.
He has yet to receive an explanation for why the RDA has sidelined this project, though he was surprised by this development given how much progress had already been made, he said.
According to Mr. Bala, boats had been identified and marked, and several meetings had been held with contractors who had submitted tenders.
“I don’t know the reason why this has [been cancelled], but I do know that there is a lot of work that has been done,” Mr. Bala added.
Chris Juredin of Commerical Dive Services, which had been asked by one of the tenderers to subcontract some of the work, said that the cancellation was “frustrating,” but he hopes that the RDA revisits the project at some point.
“It would be great for it to go ahead,” he said, adding, “For the territory as a whole it would be closure.”
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The Opposition’s health spokesman yesterday said it “makes no apologies” for handing an $18m contract to a vendor threatened with “far-reaching consequences” by the Public Hospitals Authority (PHA).
Dr Michael Darville, rushing to the defence of the Christie administration’s “aggressive healthcare agenda”, blamed the present government’s “stop, review and cancel policy” for the failure of the integrated healthcare management system (iHMS) deal awarded to Allscripts Healthcare Solutions and its partner, Infor Lawson.
The Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) senator, who was present when the Allscripts contract was signed in 2016, sought to justify the former government’s actions by saying that “the experts recommended” the US-based publicly traded company “as the number one choice” for the data-driven transformation of the Bahamian public healthcare system.
But Catherine Weech, the PHA’s managing director, told Allscripts in an August 13, 2018, letter it “can find no evidence” to show the US firm had “installed a single operating platform on any desktop device” in the two years following the contract’s award despite being paid $7m by the Bahamian taxpayer.
The letter, which has been obtained by Tribune Business, adds further weight to assertions by Dr Duane Sands, minister of health, that millions of dollars belonging to the Bahamian people has been squandered on a deal which has delivered zero value for taxpayers and patients alike.
Mrs Weech, writing to Allscripts’ president, Alan Fowles, put the Nasdaq-listed company on notice that the PHA and government intended to “decertify, and possibly rescind” the integrated healthcare management system contract unless the two sides could “re-negotiate terms of a mutually acceptable solution” by August 22 last year.
Dr Sands’ revelation to Tribune Business that legal action is likely imminent indicates that the Government, some 15 months later, is now prepared to exercise the options set out by Mrs Weech in August 2018 – a 60-day notice to Allscripts to cure its alleged contractual breaches, followed by termination of the deal and a demand for “a full refund” of sums already paid.
The PHA managing director accused Allscripts of leaving the taxpayer-funded healthcare provider with “a staggering increase in implementation costs” by failing to stick to the terms agreed in both the contract and tender process, with one-third party vendor alone responsible for more than $1.5m in undisclosed expenses.
Noting that Allscripts had failed to address the concerns set out by her predecessor, Herbert Brown, more than one year before she wrote to it, Mrs Weech said: “We submit that the PHA has endured what can only be described as a silent indifference to its plight.
“Further, not only do we have difficulty in accounting for the PHA’s almost $7m in payments but we feel that the constant demands for outstanding receivables are unjustified. We can find no evidence or documentation which would support the notion that a single Allscripts module, integration or basic operating platform has been installed within our data centre or on any desktop device.”
A position paper sent to the PHA’s Board of Directors, which was updated on September 13 last year, suggests that up to $9.1m may have already been paid to Allscripts and Infor Lawson even though Dr Sands branded the contract as “a bust” and said it had “crashed”.
This sum, which is higher than the $7m referenced in Mrs Weech’s letter, was said to have been split into $6m for software, licensing fees, implementation charges and project management fees related to Allscripts’ platform. The $3.1m balance relates to computer hardware, software and infrastructure upgrades said to have been required at the PHA’s data centre.
Mrs Weech, meanwhile, urged Allscripts to supply the rationale for demanding “support and maintenance fees” from the PHA given that no element of the integrated healthcare management system was implemented or functioning.
While “the majority of such unresolved issues” occurred before the Minnis administration took office in July 2017, appointing the present Board and management team, Mrs Weech “implored” the US healthcare technology/data services provider to render “invaluable assistance” to get the project back on schedule and contract.
Then, in a blunt warning to Allscripts, the PHA managing director wrote: “Given the position of the PHA as a statutorily-appointed body, should our chairman [Julian Rolle] opt to ask the Board to rescind the Allscripts award of the iHMS project, such actions would invariably trigger a forensic audit, resulting in the country’s attorney general possibly appointing a special counsel tasked with conducting a costly, time-consuming, international inquiry into the matter. This could have potentially far-reaching consequences for your organisation.”
The contract, which was bid over six years ago in mid-2013, was intended to totally transform healthcare delivery in The Bahamas through the use of electronic records that followed Bahamian patients wherever they went to access services. This would have given providers instant access to a person’s health history, enabling them to better and more quickly diagnose any cause of distress.
However, Mrs Weech said the project’s roll-out had been blighted from the start by a “glaring lack of oversight” on Allscripts’ part, “significant cost overruns”, “unconscionable delays”, multiple information technology (IT) issues and vendor “apathy” towards adhering to contractual terms.
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Members of the Region Six Regional Democratic Council (RDC) are currently at logger-heads with the Regional Executive Officer (REO) over the selection of appointees for the Regional Tender Board.
The regional board previously comprised PPP/C regional councillors Zamal Hussain and Phillip Rose in addition to three members appointed by the National Tender Board, including the REO, Kim Williams-Stephen, who serves as chairperson of the board.
However, the RDC has since been told that Hussain is out and the new appointees would include Rose and another person selected by the “regional administration.”
The RDC members say they were informed via correspondence by Williams-Stephen, who cited Section 19 (2) of the Procurement Act, which states that each regional tender board shall consist of five members: three members appointed by the National Tender Board and two members appointed by the Regional Administration from among persons with qualifications not dissimilar to those required for appointment to the National Board.
Rose, however, has indicated that he will only sit on the board if he is recommended by the RDC, since he believes that is the “correct process.”
Hussain at last week’s statutory RDC meeting related that Minister of Communities Ronald Bulkan has said that, “The Regional Democratic Council is the supreme local democratic organ in each region with the responsibility for overall management and administration of the region”.
He then noted that the REO of a region is the accounting officer and functions as the clerk of the Regional Democratic Council. “The main function of the democratic council is to administer all services required within the boundaries by the service such as health, education, public works etc,” he said, further citing Bulkan.
Against this background, Hussain maintained that it is the RDC that has responsibility for choosing two of the five board members.
He said from 2003 to now, the RDC has been appointing two members to sit on the tender board. “If the government of the day was very keen on scrutiny, keen on accountability and the rule of law then you cannot allow the chairman of a tender board to choose two members that they want,” Hussain added.
He questioned the fairness of Williams-Stephen having a hand in selecting two members.
Meanwhile, Regional Chair-man David Armogan pointed out that the Regional Chairman of Region 10 was appointed by the RDC to chair that region’s tender board. “So based on that precedent it is the RDC that sets the principle to which two members are elected to the tender board apart from those three that are appointed by the National Tender Board,” he argued.
He said this has been the practice over the years and he questioned for what “con-venience” efforts are being made to change it now “So why all of a sudden at this period, when we are so close to the national elections, why has it become so convenient for a custom and practice that all of a sudden we are changing it?” he questioned.
Armogan noted that he wrote to Williams-Stephen on the issue and in her response she cited Section 19 (2) of the Act.
He said, “That’s why I wanted this discussion to take place and do the right thing and if the authorities want to do the wrong thing, they can go ahead”.
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In a landmark judgment delivered on Wednesday, the High Court has upheld the Government’s policy that requires small and medium contractors to tender for garbage collection contracts, in keeping with the local government reform ideals.
Justice Joan Charles dismissed the application for judicial review brought by four contractors against the Ministry of Rural Development and Local Government, all of the Municipal Corporations and the Solid Waste Management Company Limited (SWMCOL) challenging the establishment by SWMCOL of a procurement process for garbage collection services on behalf of the 14 Municipal Corporations.
The claimants contended that implementation of the Government’s policy in reserving certain categories of work for small and medium contractors were manifestly unfair and unlawful.
Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi noted in a statement issued by the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs, noted that this process was designed to ensure there exists a level playing field among small, medium and large contractors in bidding for and obtaining garbage collection contracts.
“The Learned Judge, in rejecting the Claimants’ contention, held that Government is empowered, through the Ministry of Local Government, to contract with SWMCOL to implement a procurement process in respect of garbage collection contracts that, consistent with Government’s local government reform ideals, reserves certain categories of work for small and medium contractors. The Learned Judge found that that procurement process was a commercial and contractual matter and was not amenable to judicial review,” the release said.
The claimants’ failed application for judicial review followed Government’s change in 2017, of the previous policy for procuring the award of garbage collection services and its replacement by a holistic approach to the award of contracts within Municipal Corporations.
The AG said this was to ensure equity among all classes of contractors, expand economic activity, encourage small and medium business development and guarantee a high level of service and customer satisfaction at the local level.
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