British Virgin Islands
Government is working with the Recovery and Development Agency and two United States-based nonprofits to finalise designs for a rebuilt Elmore Stoutt High School, according to Deputy Premier Dr. Natalio “Sowande” Wheatley.
In the meantime, however, it plans to construct “additional buildings” designed to accommodate both junior and senior students at the original ESHS campus by next spring, Dr. Wheatley said last Thursday in the House of Assembly in response to a question from Opposition Leader Marlon Penn.
These additional buildings will be used at first by ESHS students and later by the Virgin Islands School of Technical Studies after the entire ESHS campus is redeveloped under the larger project, according to the minister.
“Our government through my ministry has been working with the idea to build adequate classrooms to move the senior students from the old [Clarence Thomas Limited building in Pasea Estate] by at the latest April next year to ensure that they are provided more comfortable teaching and learning spaces,” Dr. Wheatley said.
The design and construction plan for those additional buildings has not been finalised, he added.
Larger plan
For the larger campus redevelopment, he said, the ministry is working with US nonprofit Construction for Change and its architectural partner Design 4 Others, which is providing conceptual design services, he said.
“The redevelopment plan will be executed in a phased approach,” Dr. Wheatley said. “Phase one will be the construction of the junior school with the capacity to house approximately 1,000 students in a two-storey
building, and an administrative wing. Phase two [is] a redevelopment of the entire campus, indicating the placement of future buildings, including the Virgin Islands School of Technical Studies, green spaces, gardens, access pathways and main entrances and exits.”
No firm timeline is in place for the larger ESHS redevelopment, he said, and he did not provide a cost estimate or say where the funding would be sourced.
“We are going through the design phase right now. And then we’ll move to procurement after the design phase,” Dr. Wheatley explained.
“Preliminary schematic designs have been completed for the campus redevelopment and the junior school based on a statement of requirement and a user requirement document.”
During May and June, the ministry held stakeholder meetings for faculty, staff and students with question-and-answer segments and invited them to further submit questions and comments over email, according to the minister.
Additional territory-wide public meetings are planned, he said, though he did not name a date or time.
Additional buildings
The entire student body has not attended school on the original ESHS campus for nearly four years. After Hurricane Irma leveled much of their school in 2017, ESHS students were relocated to the former CTL building in Pasea Estate, where all students attended on a shift system until junior school students finally moved into the refurbished Lshaped building at their original campus at the start of the 2019- 2020 school year.
The junior school situation is a matter of urgency, the minister acknowledged, which is why the ministry has decided to move ahead and construct the “additional” classroom buildings before tackling the full ESHS reconstruction.
“We understand that the conditions at the CTL building are not ideal. And we are sorry that the teachers and students had to endure it for so long, but we are working diligently to ensure that this changes, by ensuring that when the junior school buildings spoken about above are completed, these classrooms will be able to be turned over to the technical school, allowing our senior students to be in one space,” he said.
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Guyana
Attorney General Anil Nandlall has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Jamaican company, Nevpro Realization INC., Former Public Infrastructure Minister, David Patterson, Former Permanent Secretary Balram Balraj, and Lawrence Mentis over breach of a contract.
The lawsuit is in relation to losses and damages that were suffered as a result of the breach of contract for the supply and delivery of three Mettler Toledo Weight-in-Motion Scales.
Alternatively, the AG wants an order of Restitution of all monies received as full payment under the contract dated the 6th day of December 2016, made in the sum of seventy-two million four hundred and fifty thousand Guyana dollars (GYD $72,450,000) for breach of the said contract to the Jamaican company.
Nandlall is also seeking more than $50 million for loss and damage suffered because of negligence to the State from former Minister David Patterson, Mr. Balraj, and Mr. Mentis.
“As against the Second, Third and Fourth Named Defendants, damages in excess of fifty million Guyana dollars (GYD $50,000,000) for loss and damage suffered as a result of the misfeasance in public office committed by the Second, Third and Fourth Named Defendants,”. The AG said in his submissions.
The AG is also seeking fifty million dollars for loss and damage suffered as a result of the misuse, misapplication, and improper disposal of public money contrary to the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act.
The AG said in November 2016, the Ministry invited suppliers through the National Competitive Bidding and Restricted Tendering method of procurement to bid for the procurement of fourteen (14) different lots of specified goods, which included three (3) Mettler Toledo Weight-In-Motion Scales, but those scales were never delivered.
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Guyana
A Jamaican company, former Public Infrastructure Minister David Patterson and the former Permanent Secretary Balraj Balram are facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit concerning the purchase of three weigh-in-motion scales that government said had not been delivered.
Also sued is Lawrence Mentis, a then Engineer/Manager of the Special Projects Unit of the then Ministry of Public Infrastructure.
Attorney General Anil Nandlall released court documents showing asking the High Court to order Nevpro Realization Limited of Haining Road, Kingston Jamaica to pay GY$50 million for loss and damage suffered as a result of the breach of contract dated December 6 , 2016, for the supply and delivery of three Mettler Toledo Weight-in-Motion Scales.
The State is also asking the High Court to return the GY$$72,450,000 that had been paid for the scales.
Patterson, Balram and Mentis are being sued for more than GY$50 million for each for loss of damage due to negligence, alleged misfeasance in public office, and misuse, misapplication and improper disposal of public moneys in violation of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act.
Further, all four defendants are being sued for GY$50 million for exemplary damages, aggravated damages and such interest as may be determined by the court.
In the court papers released to the media by the Attorney General, he said a Director of NevPro Realization was the campaign manager for A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) for the 2015 general and regional elections and was closely associated with the AFC of which Patterson is a founding member.
The Attorney General states that a Guyanese company, El Dorado Trading, had been the only bidder which had offered to procure the weigh-in-motion scales for GYD$10 million but had been disqualified for allegedly submitting fraudulent manufacture’s authorisation for the supply and delivery of another Lot within the same tender procedure.
Rather than inviting suppliers again, Mr. Nandlall said the Permanent Secretary on December 6, 2016 entered into a contract with Nevpro Realization Limited. According to the State, the Permanent Secretary never invited that Jamaica company to bid but after the contract had been signed, he had allegedly written to the then Chairman of the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) Mr. Berkely Wickham, requesting a “waiver of the Tender Board Procedures and for the purchase through sole sourcing” of the motion scales from Nevpro.
The Attorney General said a purported cabinet memorandum “falsely stated” that no bid had been received for the motion scales, they had been needed urgently although no catastrophic event had occurred, and that Nevpro had been suitably qualified to submit the scales and had been in operation for over 15 years although records show that it had been in existence for only four years.
The State says that on December 29, 2016 even before Cabinet had granted its no-objection to allow for the contract to be awarded to Nevpro, 50 percent or US$172,500 had been paid in advance for the motion scales. The High Court is also being asked to consider that the Permanent Secretary and Mr Mentis had after December 29 written to the Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority, Mr. Godfrey Statia, requesting the waiver of duties and taxes by falsely stating that the request is being made in accordance with a contract signed the 29 th day of December, 2016, between the Ministry and Massy Industries for the Supply and Delivery of the Motion Scales.
The Attorney General said that on January 4, 2017 the remaining 50 percent or US$172,500 had been paid although the motion scales had not been received.
On the 15*’ day of March, 2018, in excess of one year after the 90 days period, six packages purporting to be the Motion Scales were shipped to Guyana by Nevpro, only three out of the six packages were found at the Laparkan Trading Ltd, storage bond in Georgetown. “None of the packages were opened to verify that the contents of the packages actually were the Motion Scales or components of the Motion Scales,” he said.
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Guyana
GEORGETOWN, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Guyana received bids from 15 different companies aiming to market the government’s share of the crude produced off the South American country’s coast, according to Guyana’s National Procurement and Tender Board Administration website on Wednesday.
The government re-launched the search last month after a previous tender was discarded. Bids were due on Aug. 3, and companies were asked to indicate the commission they would charge per barrel of crude exported. The board did not indicate when it would select a partner.
An Exxon Mobil Corp-led consortium has discovered more than 8 billion barrels of oil and gas off Guyana’s coast, transforming the poor country into the world’s newest energy hotspot.
Guyana is entitled to a portion of the oil produced at the offshore Stabroek block, but needs a partner to market that share of the crude given that the country lacks a state oil company or domestic refining capacity.
The companies submitting bids included units of western oil majors such as Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron Corp, France’s TotalEnergies SE and Norway’s Equinor ASA . Hess Corp, a partner in the consortium that operates Stabroek block, submitted a bid, while lead partner Exxon did not.
Other companies submitting bids included commodities trading houses like Mercuria and Trafigura, as well as units of Saudi Arabia’s Aramco and China’s Sinochem.
The proposed commissions ranged from 2 cents per barrel in the case of Sinochem, to 26 cents per barrel in the case of a joint bid submitted by the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago and Trinidad-based Heritage Petroleum Company Limited.
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Belize
And with all the questions and concerns expressed by UDP Leader, Patrick Faber the government was quick to issue a press release. According to the release local and regional authorized resellers of Microsoft Office 365 Products were invited to submit quotes for the renewal of the Government’s Office 365 subscription. And with that invitation, the regional entity, Inova Solutions, SMART and Belize Telemedia Limited entered the limited tendering process. CITO had requested that all bids be password protected to keep the process fair and transparent. Password-protected bids were subsequently received via email from the three invited companies. The Bid Opening Committee consisted of three CITO officials, the Director of Procurement United at the Ministry of Finance Artemio Osorio and Finance Officer ,Erlinda Gonzales. All stakeholders agreed to open the bids in alphabetical order and that the evaluation would proceed iteratively until all three bids were assessed. During the live bid opening sessions, each tender submitted, in the virtual chat room, the password to open the tender document that they had submitted. CITO confirmed to all stakeholders that the Bids were still in a locked state before proceeding to unlock them. BTL provided a three (3) year proposal for the renewal along with value-added benefits at a value of $10.6 million and a one year proposal at $3.5 million. Inova Solutions’ proposal was for one year at $3.43 million while SMART’s proposal was for one year at $3.3 million. The Bid from Smart was the lowest. The Bid Evaluation Committee presented the findings of the Evaluation to the Ministry of Finance and recommended the award of contract to the lowest evaluated responsive Tenderer. The Ministry of Finance accepted the recommendation of the Bid Evaluation Committee and agreed to award the contract to Speednet Communications Limited (SMART). During a press conference on Tuesday, Chairman of the Board of Directors Mark Lizarraga explained that SMART simply won the bid.
Mark Lizarraga, Chairman, BTL Board of Directors: “I know of one instance of – I think it was the software licenses that went out to consult. There was bid that was put out which we lost. Which we lost. The other company unfortunately came in cheaper than us. We had margins, I think we had margins of about 10% and the other company we’re told won the contract because they bid less than us.”
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