The contract for the completion of the proposed High Street main office for the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) has been scrapped and will now be retendered through the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB).
“It will have to be retendered and through NPTAB,” Chairman of the GGMC’s Board of Directors Clinton Williams told Stabroek News yesterday. Previously, the GGMC had invited and evaluated the bids.
Contention over the award early last month, had seen the project put on hold and garnered the attention of Cabinet.
Stabroek News was told by a source that there had been many objections after the GGMC recently awarded the contract to a company with links to the firm that had allegedly produced substandard work on the building and which had its contract terminated. After a series of complaints, the GGMC’s board made a decision to put the contract on hold and review it.
Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon when asked about the project had informed that the issue was raised at a Cabinet meeting by one of its members, and said that efforts were being made to have the matter comprehensively addressed.
Luncheon had explained that with GGMC contracts, the process for awards was different and Cabinet’s no-objection was not required to go ahead as the agency is a semi-autonomous one. However, he said that at a recent Cabinet meeting, members were informed of the controversy surrounding the award. “We were told that there had been strenuous objections to an award purported