PPC took eight months to throw out complaint by R Kissoon over D&I pumps bid
Guyana
It took eight months for the PPC to throw out a complaint by R Kissoon Contracting Services over a bid for D&I pumps but more irregularities have surfaced in the tendering system including errors by the evaluation committee and the signing of the disputed contract on January 1st 2023, a national holiday.
R Kissoon complained to the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) on January 24, 2023 that its bids for the maintenance and servicing of drainage and irrigation pumps were unsuccessful even though they were the lowest for two lots and met all of the requirements. It said to the PPC that it had lodged a complaint with the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) but had gotten no response within the statutory period. The Procurement Act requires the lodging of a bid protest with the procuring entity, in this case the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) and not the NPTAB.
In its Summary of Findings adopted on February 29th this year, the PPC said it nevertheless decided to investigate the matter given its wide constitutional mandate.
The PPC’s Summary of Findings is replete with instances where both the NPTAB and the NDIA ignored requests for crucial clarifying information.
The PPC discovered based on the documents submitted to it that the Evaluation Committee of the NPTAB said R Kissoon was non-responsive on three of the criteria and its bids were therefore thrown out. However, the PPC found that R Kissoon could possibly only have been deemed non responsive in relation to one guideline and had actually complied with the other two.
This discovery will raise further questions about the arbitrary conduct of the evaluation committees of the NPTAB and how certain contractors could be favoured over others. In a recent controversial case, despite having failed several guidelines, including the requirement to have previously built a pump station, the evaluation committee admitted the bid of Tepui Inc as responsive. Tepui was later awarded the contract and this has triggered a major controversy.
The PPC found that the complainant was deemed non-responsive by the Evaluation Committee for failing to satisfy three of the Evaluation Criteria – financial and technical, particularly – Criteria #9: Evidence of financial capacity representing (25%) for each individual lot. The bidder must provide a bank statement or line of credit from a bank or a recognized financial institution. The document must be dated within one month of the bid opening date and be clearly legible.
Included in the record of the tender proceedings submitted by the NPTAB to the commission, was a Statement from Republic Bank (Triumph Branch) evidencing a bank account balance of the complainant in the sum of $40,957,648. The statement was dated December 16th, 2022, that is, within one month of the bid opening on December 20th, 2022 as required.
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