The National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) was mum yesterday on the recent awarding of a US$154,154 contract to Trinidadian company, Western Scienti-fic, which was accused earlier this year of delivering expired or nearly expired drugs to the Ministry of Public Health.
At last week’s post-cabinet briefing, Minister of State Joseph Harmon announced that the company had secured a contract for the procurement of Sysmex reagents for the National AIDS Programme Secretariat.
The award of the contract to Western Scientific will raise further questions about the quality of the evaluation committees that are assessing the various bidders and whether the track record of the bidders is being taken into account. The NPTAB had said that it was going to widen the pool of evaluators. Concerns have been expressed in the past that evaluators are coming from the ministries and entities which are the procuring agencies and therefore the process can be contaminated…..
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