Despite having convened a press conference last Saturday on the controversial award of a contract for the specialty hospital to Surendra Engineering, the Ministry of Health is still to answer key questions, including why a company with major hospital building experience was not chosen.
For several days Stabroek News has been attempting to elicit answers on the contract award from Permanent Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Health Leslie Cadogan but he has been unavailable and yesterday Minister of Health Dr Bheri Ramsaran said that he was taking an “arm’s length approach” to procurement and referred all questions to Cadogan, who had headed the evaluation committee which made the selection.
Several calls to the Permanent Secretary’s cell phone yesterday proved futile and calls during working hours to his office went unanswered. Up to press time yesterday, he was still unavailable.
Ramsaran, in an invited comment, said that all questions should be directed to Cadogan, as he has now taken an “arm’s length approach” not only to the specialty hospital contract award but from all procurement issues. “I have now taken an arm’s length approach to all procurement issues…my PS knows the sequence of events, knows what should be done and he is the best person to answer all of your questions,” the minister said.
Amid the information blackout, Indian company Fedders Lloyd, which felt it should have won the contract, has continued the pressure on the government and the Ministry of Health.
It said yesterday that the Ministry of Health continues to breach this country’s procurement laws as it is yet to inform them that they have lost the bid to build the specialty hospital, as is legally required.
“We still have not gotten any official word from your government that we have lost the contract or who [has] won. All we have been going on is from reports in the media and Dr. (Roger) Luncheon’s announcement of the award… The laws of Guyana says that they must notify all bidders,” Vice President of the Company Naresh Chandra Soral yesterday told Stabroek News as he read from the Procurement Act.
There has been much controversy over the US$18.18M contract awarded to Surendra Engineering to design, build, and equip the specialty hospital that will be located at Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara.
Fedders Lloyd has built around 90 hospitals worldwide while Surendra hasn’t constructed any.
On June 26, the bids of the five companies that had submitted tenders were opened. The bidders were: Fedders Lloyd (US$17,679,000 after a 23% discount); Shapoorji Pallonji (US$42,473,600); Jaguar Overseas Limited (US$15,658,000) and the Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences and Research of India (US$19.5 million); and Surendra Engineering (US$18,180,000). After Luncheon announced that Cabinet had given its ‘no- objection’ to the award of the contract to the tune of USD$18,180,000, Fedders Lloyd objected to the award to Surendra Engineer-ing, as it claimed that the company had breached tender document stipulations.
The company on Thursday wrote to the Ministry of Health, carbon copying the correspondence to the Minister of Health, President Donald Ramotar and EXIM Bank of India (which is financing the project), among others, asking that the contract be reviewed and that it be awarded the contract instead.
The letter also included the company’s assessment of the bidding and evaluation process—which prompted it to protest the decision—and it maintains its claims that there were irregularities in the bidding and evaluation process. Government has accused Fedders Lloyd of orchestrating a campaign against the work of the National Procure-ment and Tender Administra-tion Board (NPTAB) committee and politicising the situation, while saying that it had sought to influence the outcome of the process in its favour since the opening of the bids.
