Trinidad and Tobago
THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine has admitted million-dollar contracts were awarded to Trinidad contractors.
At a media conference last Friday, PNM Tobago Council leader and former chief secretary Ancil Dennis produced documents and accused Augustine of hypocrisy.
He claimed the PDP administration had approved $309 million to Trinidad contractors in one month for infrastructural work, recalling that the “PDP administration sold the people of Tobago a mandate on a platform that involved putting Tobago first.”
He said no tendering process was used for the contracts.
Augustine responded
on the Tobago Updates morning show on Monday.
“There is little validity in what he presented about one of the documents being valid, but I assure you that no one was sole-selected.”
He said in the case of these contracts, the executive gave the division, and rightfully so, the authority to use its procurement mechanism, project managers, along with its technical expertise, to determine the fastest way to get the contracts done.
“I assure you, the division did not use a sole-select mechanism to get the contracts done. In fact, I am advised that 40 contractors were evaluated. That was then brought down to seven. Three were then selected.”
He said these contracts are design, build and finance.
“The THA is not paying these contractors up front. In fact, the THA would not be paying these contractors until nine months after completion, nine months after a proper certificate of completion is done.
“In other words, those that would have to do these contracts would have to have capacity, will have to have the skill set and expertise, would have to have the finance up front 100 per cent, will have to have the ability to wait nine-plus months to be paid in total – nine-18 months in this case.”
He said Secretary of the Division of Infrastructure, Quarries and Urban Development Trevor James is expected to “give a broader explanation on it, but I assure you – none of these contracts were sole-selected.”
He said if a tendering process or a selective tendering process is opened, then one cannot stop Trinidad contractors from getting into the pool.
“That is the reality. Similarly, there are Tobago contractors that get into the pool in Trinidad because how do you go to court and say, ‘Well, we stopped everybody who wasn’t Tobagonian from the beginning of these contracts’?
“You will lose legally, because there is a right to equality of treatment, and it remains one country. That is just one of the unfortunate things.”
He said Tobago has to “continuously build the capacity of local Tobago contractors.
“We have to build their capacities, and also, we have to be reminded (of) what happened as recent(ly) as in the lead-up to the THA elections (in January and December 2021), where several Tobago contractors either stole from or have been attempting to steal from the very THA that they are supposed to protect.
“So when we are talking about Tobago and Tobago’s development, we also have to have a firm position in protecting Tobago’s purse as well. I give no apologies for that whatsoever.”
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Guyana
“The AFC calls on the Public Procurement Commission to conduct a full investigation into the operations of the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board. Special attention should be paid to the bid evaluation and contract award process,” MP Patterson urged during an AFC press conference on Friday.
Flagging a number of multimillion-dollar contracts awarded since the change in administration in 2020, the Alliance For Change (AFC), today called on the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) to launch an investigation into the issuance of contracts by National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB).
“The AFC calls on the Public Procurement Commission to conduct a full investigation into the operations of the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board. Special attention should be paid to the bid evaluation and contract award process,” MP Patterson urged during an AFC press conference on Friday.
The $566.9M contract awarded to Kares Engineering Inc. for the construction of the North Ruimveldt Secondary School, in August, was among the “questionable” contracts flagged by the AFC.
A few years ago, Kares Engineering was threatened with legal action over the botched work it had done in constructing the Kato Secondary School.
In 2013, it had secured a $728.1M contract to build the school, but upon ‘completion’ in 2015, the building was found with major defects.
With the company securing another multimillion-dollar contract, MP Patterson wants the PPC to investigate the award.
“The recent award for the rebuilding of the North Ruimveldt Multilateral School is yet another example of the questionable evaluation…process arising from NPTAB. One can recall that the last time this contractor was awarded a contract by the Ministry of Education headed by the current Minister [Priya Manickchand], they jointly produce the Kato Secondary School Project – a project so riddled with defects that it was deemed unsafe for occupation,” the AFC Executive pointed out.
He reminded that extensive remedial work had to be done on the Kato Secondary School.
MP Patterson also referenced to the $364M contract awarded to St8ment Investment Inc for the construction of a primary school at Bamia, Region 10 and the $614M contract awarded to Mohammed’s Enterprise for the construction of the new head office of the Guyana Fire Service.
“Commencing August 2020, several contracts have caught the public’s attention, ranging from the award of a school in Region 10 to a company that has no tract record in construction. In fact, the principals of that company are better known for the promotion of sporting and entertaining events. Additionally, the award for the construction of a Fire Station to a company whose main business activity is in the Mining Sector. When questioned about the company’s previous experience, the response was, the successful bidder constructed their own offices. In 2020, the completion of Hunter Street was awarded to a company whose principal previous experience was in the motor racing arena. Once again, when queried, the response was, the successful bidder, previously built roads in the backdam,” MP Patterson said.
He said the public must pay keen attention to the tender process for the Gas-to-Energy Project. He recalled that in January 2022, NPTAB received 12 prequalification bids for the project, yet, on Thursday, companies that did not prequalify, submitted bids. The final award, he said would be interesting.
AFC is in the process of compiling a list of all the contracts it deems “questionable” for submission to the PPC for an investigation to be done.
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Guyana
Following President Irfaan Ali’s defence of the $556.9 million award to Kares Contracting for the construction of the North Ruimveldt Multilateral School in Georgetown, former Auditor General, Anand Goolsarran, says that government is not absolved from pointing out breaches in the awards of contracts as per the Pro-curement Act and should have objected.
“Cabinet is also not a passive player in its involvement in the procurement process. It has a duty under Section 54 of the Procurement Act to first review the streamlined evaluation report prepared by NPTAB, setting out the basis for the proposed award of a contract. Cabinet can object to the award of a contract if all the procedures have not been followed,” Goolsarran wrote in this week’s edition of his Accountability Column in the Stabroek News.
“In the case of the Kares contract, one of the key qualification requirements relates to past performance, which both the Ministry of Education and NPTAB failed to consider,” he highlighted.
Last week, during an exclusive interview with this newspaper, President Irfaan Ali when asked about the contract, surmised that that all awards for government contracts follow the law and that there is only so much government can do.
“This was a public tender. What are we to do? If you went out, if you go to public tender, a public process, people participate in the process, there’s a recommendation that goes to the tender board, the Board sends a recommendation to Cabinet, who can who only have a response… what else is there to do?” Ali questioned during the interview.
The President was asked about concerns of perceived procurement corruption with large public projects and his government’s justification for the Kares award.
“First of all, I do not control the tender process. Every single project went out to public tender. In that public tender, the bids were received, there is an evaluation by the tender board and the recommendation sent to Cabinet. All we do is offer a no- objection,” he stressed. The president said that the governing party has “no affiliation” with the company awarded the contract. “I don’t know the party having any affiliation with any person, Kares or anyone else, that is the justification for someone getting a project.”
Goolsarran has said that the Ministry of Education, NPTAB, and Cabinet, all failed in their duty to the public by not acting to stop Kares Engineering Inc from securing the $566.9 million North Ruimveldt Secondary School contract considering its previous poor performance on an even larger project.
In his accountability column, last week, he said that after the Evaluation Committee of NPTAB had concluded its work and recommended Kares, the procuring agency – the Ministry of Education – had an obligation to take account of Kares’ disastrous work on the $728m Kato Secondary School project of 2012. Goolsarran said that Section 5 of the Procure-ment Act sets out the responsibilities of the procuring entity in relation to the criteria to be used in determining the qualifications of contractors and suppliers. “Included in the list of criteria is the requirement that past performance substantiated by documentary evidence would commend the concerned contractor or supplier for serious consideration for the award of the contract. The Ministry of Education therefore had the obligation of ensuring that Kares Engineering met this criterion before consideration of its tender,” he contended.
Another procurement specialist told this newspaper that the procuring entity, the Ministry of Educa-tion, “should have, as a rule, ensured that their tender document asked questions about previous performance and this was a glaring one since it was the same Ministry that had that experience with the disastrous Kato School.” The specialist agreed with Goolsarran saying that, “The NPTAB also erred badly or looked the other way.”
Ali said that he believes that all the processes were followed and emphasised that it was all done under public scrutiny. “This is a public process. So we [should] abandon this public process? I don’t understand. I don’t understand the genesis of these issues. I don’t understand how we derive or we even come to a position that these are issues for us, when you’re going through a mechanism; you’re going through a public process,” he said. Asked if he is satisfied with the current processes, he replied, “I have to be satisfied with the institutional arrangements surrounding [it] and the laws. The laws are there on how bids are advertised and how bids are received. We don’t involve ourselves in that. There is a Procure-ment Act. There is a National Procurement and Tender Administration Board. It is a public advertisement. What else can the government do? What else are we supposed to do?” he asked.
The procurement specialist said that the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) could have also investigated given that they have the legal authority to, even without a complaint.
“There was enough of a public outcry about the previous project that should have put everyone on notice. The PPC has the authority to investigate how the contract was awarded. They can investigate any part of the process. They are the oversight body with the power, particularly if something smells ‘fishy’! They should investigate this one even if it is just to assure the public that there is no corruption involved in the process,” the official said.
This week, Goolsarran emphasised that at varying points of the procurement process, the Ministry of Education, NPTAB, and the Cabinet that the President presides over, should have taken action to safeguard public spending.
He said that the President may have overlooked the fact “that even the best of systems and procedures are likely to produce less than the desired results if officials responsible of overseeing those systems and procedures are not selected on the basis of certain established criteria.
“These include professional and technical competence; proven track record in the related fields; demonstrated objectivity, integrity, independence and ethical behavior; and the ability to put the public interest above all other interests,” the former AG informed.
However, he noted that unfortunately, the evidence suggests that quite the opposite happens in respect of several key non-political appointments, as he pointed to appointments at the NPTAB Board.
“Selection is often based on political loyalty and/or party affiliation, as well as on the belief that the appointed official may be swayed to manipulate rules and procedures to favour a certain desired outcome,” Goolsarran contended.
He pointed out that the current NPTAB Board’s tenure ends in the next ten days and expressed the hope that the appointment of its new members will be based on the above-stated criteria.
“The appointment of the current chairperson, who is a senior official of the Ministry of Finance, was to have been a temporary one, but this was not to be. The Procurement Act provides for a two full-time persons to sit on the seven-member board, including the chairperson,” he highlights.
He is appealing to the future Board to not only make the minutes of the awards public but also the basis of contract awards.
“In addition, a scrutiny of the minutes of the weekly tender board meetings posted on NPTAB’s website shows only a spreadsheet listing of the various bids received, the amounts involved and certain other information. There is no indication of the basis of the award. We trust that the new NPTAB will consider it necessary to make available on its website, the actual discussions that take place leading to the contract award,” he said
Further, he added, “also, should the report of the Evaluation Committee not be made available to the public via NPTAB’s website in the interest of transparency and proper accountability?
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Trinidad and Tobago
Harvard Business Review (April 2019) warned that perfectionism is a double-edged sword that can either motivate you to deliver high-quality work or cause you much anxiety and slow you down.
Are we witnessing this play out with the many iterations of the procurement legislation saga, or is it something else? Have we moved unwisely and sadly to entangle the Judiciary to get a “perfect” solution?
In March 2014, Mr Greg Christie, former Jamaica contractor-general (the equivalent of our Procurement Regulator), gave an important speech to the local Transparency International (TI) chapter that ought to be reprinted to benefit our nation’s discourse. He quoted Mr Jim Young Kim, then-president of the World Bank, “Let us not mince words. In the developing world, corruption is Public Enemy #1”. He named Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana as possessing systemic corruption. Christie presciently identified, “In monetary terms, the illicit manipulation of the award of government contracts, and licences, as well as the divestment of publicly-owned assets, have long been considered to be possibly the largest opportunity that exists for corruption in any country.” TI estimated the cost of corruption in public contracting to be ten to 25 per cent and, in the worst cases, as much as 50 per cent of the total contract cost.
Unknown to all in the audience, that reality was lurking. By April 2022, Justice Rahim ruled that there was an attempt to rob us, the citizens, of almost TT$873 million! Justice Aboud’s 2021 observation is equally chilling in a case involving $200 million. As Mr Christie observed, “it simply means that there will be significantly less public funds available to build schools and hospitals, to fight crime, and to provide for the much needed public infrastructure and services, such as housing, roads, water and electricity, which… are today at sub-standard levels”.
In May 2019, Mr Imbert noted the need to raise $900 million to complete 27 schools. (Guardian, May 24, 2019). Yet in January 2019, he blasted the Express for an article and an Editorial on the draft procurement regulations. He promised fervently “this publicly announced timeline of the first quarter of 2019 for implementation of the act is still on track”! Since then, we have been seeing a zig-zagging and unproductive inter-party squabbling.
Do we have the political will to do what is proper and necessary? It appears neither political party is ready to do right by the citizens. WASA could demote their acting CEO for not following the board’s instructions, but our regulator’s year-long work with State institutions could perish. Why?
Jamaica’s Justice Batt’s 2013 ruling in the Paymaster v Postal Corporation case noted, “Exclusions are listed in Regulation 4, and in Regulation 5, it is stated that “these Regulations do not apply to the tendering and other procurement activities in relation to contracts that are below the approval threshold lawfully prescribed from time to time including special thresholds prescribed for specific entities.”
How will we benefit from implementation? The World Bank speaks to a 400-per cent governance dividend or a four-fold increase in per-capita income. Private sector businesses will grow by as much as three per cent annually. The cost of corruption is a 20 per cent regressive tax.
Let us listen to Greg Christie if we do not wish to listen to Afra Raymond. Let Moonilal Lalchan get cracking!
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Jamaica
THE Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) has been called out by the Integrity Commission for breaches of Government procurement guidelines related to the award of a contract 10 years ago to Knightsman Security for services at the Downtown Kingston Transport Centre..
In a report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday regarding the investigation which commenced in April 2015, the director of investigations for the commission, Kevon Stephenson urged the KSAMC to stick to public procurement guidelines and to ensure that all its contracts are in black and white.
The probe, initiated by the Office of the Contractor General (now subsumed along with two other anti-corruption agencies into the Integrity Commission), sought to ascertain the circumstances surrounding the alleged award of a contract to Knightsman by the then Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) for provision of security services at the transport centre for 2010/2011, and a debt to the company of just over $13 million.
It was found that in February 2011 the KSAC invited the company to provide services at the transport centre, and that similar letters were addressed to Atlas Protection Limited, Modern Investigation and security, Ranger Protection and Security, and the Guardsman Group. KSAC told the commission that it found no evidence to suggest that these letters were actually dispatched to the companies.
The commission said the process by which Knightsman provided security services at the transport centre was contrary to the Government’s procurement guidelines and said there were irregularities in the process under which the company provided those services, including the absence of a formal tender process; no set criteria for bidders; no evaluation methodology; no specifications for the provision of services. The report outlined that there was no evidence of a written contract between the KSAC and Knightsman Security.
The commission also found that, up to March 2012, the company had not been paid in full for providing the service, and furthermore, the KSAC had terminated its services, despite the unpaid debt.
According to the report, the KSAC signed an agreement with the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) which obligated the UDC to implement any necessary security measures and all payments and expenses related to the transportation centre, but the KSAC, having at first said the UDC was responsible to compensate Knightsman, had ultimately accepted the liability.
The commission advised that the KSAC had sought to pay the $13.7 million in two parts, and legal costs of $1.5 million to Knightsman, but the company had rejected that proposal and the KSAC then agreed to a “one-off” payment of $13.729 million, as evidenced by a January 2016 voucher.
The KSAC had previously paid $7.59 million to Knightsman between December 2010 and December 2011.
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