Jamaica
MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Member of Parliament (MP) for Manchester Central Rhoda Crawford is urging the National Works Agency (NWA) to increase the pace of approving roadworks in her constituency.
“The Government allocated $40 million to all Members of Parliament. I did my submission in January. I understand that there are some procurement issues at the NWA head office in Kingston [and] I want to make a special appeal here today to the team at NWA,” Crawford told journalists during a function in Mandeville recently.
Motorists in Mandeville have complained about the deplorable state of roads close to the town centre, including a section of Manchester Road leading to the Northern Caribbean University.
But Crawford argued that the Manchester Road is among those which she submitted to the NWA for repairs some six months ago.
She charged that politicians are often blamed for the slow implementation of projects, while it is often State agencies which cause the delay.
“We want them to move as swiftly as they can while obeying the guidelines to get these projects out. It cannot be that I would have submitted several roads since January [and] it is six months later and none of those projects have been approved so that the work can start.
“When constituents and citizens don’t understand this, at the end of the day, it is the political representatives who gets blamed for these things, so I am appealing to the NWA, please, whatever the issues are in the procurement department, sort them out so that we can get the work of the people done,” added Crawford.
However, NWA Communications Manager Stephen Shaw defended the agency’s handling of the submissions made by MPs.
“What has happened is that we have projects for every Member of Parliament that we have to procure through this programme,” said Shaw.
“It is impossible for us to go through 200 projects, or thereabout, and for each project you have to do tenders. You might get three tenders on average per project, and that is putting it at 600 tenders that you have to…evaluate. So there are a lot of things involved before we get to the point where a contract is signed,” added Shaw.
He said, “Not everyone will see the activities at the same time,” in response to Crawford’s complaints.
“Yes, we have budgetary support from the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, but the rules of engagement remain the same. We have to follow the processes that have been established by the Government as it relates to the contracting process,” declared Shaw.
Image: pexels-ali-madad
Read more
Trinidad and Tobago
Residents of Penal Rock Road, the major road running from Penal to Basse Terre Village in Moruga, can soon breathe a sigh of relief as major repair works are set to begin.
Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan, as well as director of the Programme for Upgrading Roads Efficiency Unit (PURE), Hayden Phillip, confirmed that tenders went out for repair work to three of four major landslips along Penal Rock Road.
The minister said the projects would be done in stages, adding that the ministry has “an aggressive landslip programme.” This programme includes PURE, Highways Division and the Bridges, Landslips and Traffic Management (BLT) Unit.
“We are addressing them, but they take some time especially now we have the procurement regulations. So whereas before we could have put out a tender and immediately get boots on the ground once it closed and award was made, there are certain processes now that have to take place,” Sinanan said.
“We are now working through those processes and it will take a little longer to get boots on the ground. However, everything is being addressed. We are also working with budgets.”
Sinanan said after the tenders are closed, they must be evaluated and timelines would be given before the works start.
Sinanan spoke on Thursday at Bonne Aventure Road in Gasparillo, where road works are ongoing on a massive landslip.
Sinanan, Phillip and other ministry officials visited Gasparillo and other areas where works are ongoing.
For years, residents in Santa Maria Village, Moruga have been begging for the roads to be repaired. Major landslips have prevented large vehicles from entering the rural community, and shop owners are forced to meet suppliers outside the community to buy goods.
Classes at the Santa Maria RC school often have to be dismissed early as water trucks cannot get to the location to give water.
A graduation and award ceremony is set for June 23 at the school under the theme “We are conquerors.”
On May 29, a fish vendor lost his goods after his van capsized while he was trying to manoeuvre on the deplorable road.
more
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Read more
Barbados
Independent Senator Dr Kristina Hinds wants to see a greater effort made to improve transparency in Government’s procurement process, as she suggested that some Barbadians were still “suspicous” about the system.
Speaking in the Upper House on Wednesday during debate on the Public Procurement (Amendment) Bill, 2023, Dr Hinds noted that despite the introduction of the e-procurement system, Bonfire, there was still concern among citizens that certain businesses continued to secure the major government contracts.
“If we look at Barbados and if we look at this region, some of the things that we may find are that some of the entities that have amassed wealth, that are wealth creators, are able to do so because of their ability to be successful in bidding for government contracts,” she said.
There is a fear and there is a suspicion – and this is not related to a particular government, I’m talking about something systemic – . . . that when it comes to the award of large contracts, the usual suspects are the ones who would feature prominently. The scraps would remain for those smaller players who, perhaps because of how the tender is constructed, would not be able to perhaps successfully bid for certain things.”
Individuals and companies supplying goods and services to the Government will have to be registered in the Bonfire procurement system which is in its pilot phase. It transitions the procurement process from paper-based to an electronic platform.
Although Hinds acknowledged that the new process will make applications for government contracts hassle-free, she said it did not go far enough to tackle the suspicions that Barbadians have about the process.
“We have to remember that these are tools, and these are not solutions. So we digitise something, it can solve some things. It can solve the long waits, for instance, but it does not solve some of the other things I was speaking about. The concern is that it is those within a network that are able to have access to particular contracts; that they might know about them early, for some reason that has nothing to do with this legislation or the technology,” said the Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.
She added that transparency in the political process is also crucial.
“The suspicion that remains in this country [is] that persons or entities who may be funding certain political activities may ‘have an in’ to the tendering process. There is a reason that suspicion exists, and that is because we do not know how political campaigns are financed from either side.
“Governments change and each time they change the suspicions remain. Technology is not going to solve that, having a register and having an online mechanism for registering and bidding is not going to address this,” Hinds asserted.
more
Image: pexels-rodrigo-santos
Read more
Trinidad and Tobago
In March, the government, through iGovTT, invited tenders for a proposed Tier 4 data centre facility at Phoenix Park Industrial Estate.
Trinidad and Tobago has at least five working data centres.
Getting a response to questions on the matter took more than a month, as the query was bounced from the procurement agency, iGovTT, to the Ministry of Digital Transformation (MoDT).
The formal statement, in an email signed by Kemba Moses-Henry, Business Operations Assistant II of the ministry’s Engagement and Behavioural Communications Unit stated, “This data centre is required to service the immediate requirements for current digital transformation programmes and projects, and to support the long-term digitalisation vision for significantly enhanced resiliency and security for all government digital solutions.”
Why is it necessary to build another facility from scratch? Why not co-locate government servers in existing facilities pending an upgrade of those facilities to Tier 4 status?
“The government’s digital transformation agenda is highly focused on services to citizens and the proper management and handling of government and user data. As such, there is the conviction that the need for the government to own and manage its own data centre and associated technology to support those use-cases with highly sensitive or confidential datasets.”
One of the specifications that separates Tier 3 status from Tier 4 is the provision of electricity from two different suppliers. Trinidad and Tobago has only one, TTEC, and changing that requires an act of Parliament.
The prospectus for the MoDT project includes a solar park capable of producing 500 kilowatts of electricity. Will the government generate its own electricity for the facility in defiance of law?
A caveat in the published prospectus for the proposed data centre, notes that the project must have, “At a minimum Tier 3 certification at the point of commissioning if the elements for Tier 4 are not available within the timeline specified.”
Acknowledging the importance of the government retaining substantive control of sensitive national data, TSTT noted in a response to questions, that it has the only data centre in the Caribbean and Latin America with both TIA 942-B Rated 3 certification for infrastructure and DCOS maturity level 3 for operations.
Other data centre facilities run by Flow, AirLink and Fujitsu function at a minimum of Tier 2. Digicel announced plans for a Tier 3 facility in 2015.
Data centre certifications are a swamp land of acronyms, but the critical difference between Tier 3 and Tier 4 comes down to redundancy and uptime.
The strategic deployment of duplicate power sources, components and cooling systems raise the reliability of a data centre from 99.982% availability at Tier 3 to 99.995 availability at Tier 4.
That’s the difference between service recovery times of 1.6 hours and 26.3 minutes annually. The largely theoretical Tier 5 sets annual downtime at 5.3 minutes.
Tier 4 facilities have no single point of failure. The specification requires a duplicate, active version of every component in the data centre. That makes Tier 4 specified data centres as much as 50 per cent more expensive to build.
TSTT’s TIA 942-B Rated 3 data centre currently offers this concurrently maintainable site infrastructure.
“TSTT’s data centre services have grown exponentially over the years, to the extent that we have embarked on projects that add capacity to both our colocation services and our cloud portfolio,” the company explained.
“This increase in capacity is readily available to the Government and can be used immediately to ensure that there are no delays in the Ministry of Digital Transformation’s digital citizen road map and other key projects.”
The MoDT explained in its response that it plans public/private sector partnerships that will include the integration of local third-party data centres to support the expansion of its services.
“This will result in a general increase in the utilisation of all existing Data Centres and is not limited to Tier 3 Data Centres; the intention being that they will remain and grow,” the MoDT stated.
The Digital Transformation Ministry has specified a six-month project completion timeline after acceptance of a tender.
Some very rough calculations.
A 500Kw solar farm built to commercial standards costs around US$1 million.
Costs for Tier 4 data centre construction run to US$25,000 per Kw, suggesting an estimate of US$12.5 million for the proposed facility.
TSTT described itself as excited by the government’s planned data centre.
“TSTT stands ready and available to leverage our wealth of knowledge in the data centre and telecoms field to ensure that the national data dentre is unmatched both locally and regionally.”
TSTT is 51 per cent owned by government, which has, in practical terms, complete oversight of its operations. Competitor Liberty Global’s 49 per cent share is silent and uncompensated, pending the sale of those shares (https://bit.ly/3N993xo).
Eight years later, no buyer has emerged, leaving the organisation in Janus’ dilemma, one face toward its state owner, the other to its commercial responsibility to deliver stakeholder returns.
Is it time to remove this Chinese curtain of divided purpose before spending more than $100 million to create a data centre that already exists?
more
Image: pexels-markus-spiske
Read more
Guyana
Since the implementation of the Local Content Act [LCA], the local content spend in the procurement of goods and services, and employment have increased substantially relative to the revenue generated by the oil companies, namely, EEPGL, Hess and CNOOC, when compared to the previous years. As of 2022, according to the Local Content Secretariat, total local content spend amounted to US$700 million or G$147 billion and is projected to reach US$1 billion or G$210 billion annually. For the same period, EEPGL reported its local content spend amounted to US$400 million, representing 57% of the total spend exclusive of employment cost attributable to its Guyanese labour force.
While these are commendable achievements, it remains unclear to what extent are Guyanese firms losing contracts to foreign firms in which they have demonstrable capacity and capabilities. The recommendations put forward herein are intended to strengthen the Local Content Act aimed at maximizing the value of local content-spend. These proposals are based on the lessons learned from the experiences of local companies that are still facing a number of challenges. I am of the strong view that strengthening the Local Content Legislation can result in the value of in-country spend on local content increasing significantly.
Pursuant to the Local Content Act, EEPGL/ExxonMobil is required to provide feedback, presumably that would help unsuccessful bidders understand where they fell short for the provision of goods and services. The LCA mandates that a “fair and transparent” process ought to be undertaken in the procurement pro-cess for goods and services. Additionally, section 13 of the Local Content Act speaks to Bid Evaluation wherein Section 13 (3) states that: “A contractor, sub-contractor or Licensee shall award a contract on the basis of competitive bidding procurement procedure that has been initiated by a widely circulated public tender process.”
In order to give operational effect to the foregoing sub-section in the Act, the Local Content Secretariat developed a Bid Evaluation Guide-line to be adopted by Contractors. Specifically, 3.7 of the Guideline spoke to a “fair and transparent process”. Having been involved in a competitive procurement process with EEPGL recently, I am of the view that the procurement process of EEPGL is not fully transparent in the manner that the LCA contemplated.
Considering that oil and gas upstream activities are financed from the operating cash flow generated from the sale of Guyana’s crude, it is reasonable to expect that the complete procurement process should be done in a fully transparent manner particularly in the post contract award stage. In so doing, all of the bidders that participated should at minimum be furnished with the following information:
i) How many firms/suppliers participated in the final RFQ/RFP stage of the procurement process,
ii) The names of the firms/suppliers,
iii) State whether the firms participated in the RFQ/RFP stage of the process are 100% or 51% Guyanese owned firms,
iv) Which of the firm/supplier was awarded the contract and whether the firm is a 100% or 51% Guyanese owned firm and/or whether the firm is a foreign entity; and
v) The quoted prices by all shortlisted firms, including the firm awarded the contract.
The above mirrors the national procurement procedure which is a publicly transparent process. This author is of the view that the aforementioned is in conformity with the spirit of the Local Content Act in the interest of a fair and transparent process that when applied all participating suppliers are privy to this information. The Local Content Secretariat should also be furnished with this information so that a fair determination can be ascertained by all parties involved in the process, as well as the regulator. If, however, the Contractor, Sub-contractors or Licensees find it difficult, for whatever reason, to furnish suppliers with the aforementioned information, then such requirements should be provided to the Local Content Secretariat.
There are situations in which 100% small and medium sized Guyanese owned firms are losing contracts to better resourced local firms that have entered into Joint Ventures (JVs) with foreign firms. There is a particular example wherein a 100% small Guyanese firm lost a contract to a JV in which the foreign partner has the capability for the assignment but not the local partner. In this example, the contention is that this is essentially an indigenous firm losing to a foreign entity. Notwithstanding, it should be mentioned categorically that losing to another 100% or 51% Guyanese firm that possess similar capability would have been perfectly fine, but, not to a foreign entity that has a JV with a local firm just to cash in on contracts. This is unacceptable and contravenes the spirit of the Local Content Act.
To date, there are approximately 838 companies registered with the Local Content Secretariat that have obtained their local content certification. Of this amount, 752 or 90% are 100% Guyanese owned and the remaining 10% are JVs with the 51% Guyanese owned and 49% foreign ownership structure. Given the above situation, it would be interesting to discern whether the 90% Guyanese firms that are 100% indigenous are the beneficiaries of 90% of the local content spend. Presumably, based on engagement with other local firms and feedback provided at various consultation forums, it would appear that the inverse is more accurate–that is, the 10% local companies that are comprised of 49% foreign ownership are the beneficiaries of 90% of the local content spend. If this is proven to be true, then it is certainly not the desired outcome, especially if the 90% category that are 100% Guyanese owned do possess similar capabilities and capacities. The authorities are currently reviewing the Local Content Act. Accordingly, the following recommendations are presented for their consideration, viz-á-viz, amendments to the Act:
Amendment to the Local Content Act mandating Contractors, Sub-contractors, or Licensee to provide suppliers at minimum, with the type of information as outlined in (i-v) above as part of a “fair and transparent” procurement process.
Development of Local Content Regulations to aid in the administration of the Local Content Act.
The regulations and the Act should be amended to include a prescriptive Bid Evaluation Guideline to be adopted, that includes, for example, primary consideration to be given to 100% Guya-nese owned firms first, provided that they possess the capability and capacity, and if they do not have the required capability and capacity, only then Contractors, Sub-contractors or Licensees should consider JV firms comprising of foreign entities.
more
Image: Contract-agreement-signature-
Read more
