The Ministry of Communities yesterday signed seven contracts under the Community Infrastructural Improve-ment Project (CIIP) including $40.8m for the Golden Beach Boulevard at Bartica.
A statement from the Ministry yesterday said that the signing was done in its boardroom at Fort Street, Kingston office.
The Ministry received the green-light for award of five of the retendered projects and two green spaces.
Three contractors who have never worked on projects for the Ministry of Communities were given an opportunity to bid. The process also resulted in more responsive bids and satisfied contractors who felt that they were given a fair chance to participate in the procurement system, the release said.
The awards are as follows:
The release noted that in May 2017, the Ministry had invited several small contractors to discuss their missteps in the tendering process after most of the previous bidders were found to be non-responsive.
The contractors were among those who bid for nine projects in February 2017; seven of which were found to have non-responsive bids.
The group had met with Permanent Secretary (PS), Emil McGarrell and Procurement Manager, Michael Blackman.
The release said that the PS had urged the contractors to build their capacity to perform not only small contracts but much larger ones.
According to McGarrell, all of the tenders had failed due to simple administrative lapses such as failure to include the business registration etc.
“We put out a tender for which you responded but unfortunately everybody failed to meet the criteria.
This is for the administrative aspect and not the technical aspect,” McGarrell said at the May meeting.
In addition, some of the contractors failed to submit a valid registration, National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) compliance while others did not complete the tender documents or failed to attach a signature to the bid declaration form.
Other tenders were deemed non-responsive over the failure to indicate whether they were engaged in litigation, whether they are involved in ongoing projects and for failing to provide a list of equipment.
The ministry later re-tendered the projects and the contractors were allowed to resubmit bids.
Tendered were received on March, 21, 2017. However, only two projects saw non- responsive bids. These were:
- Upgrading of Paradise Playfield, Paradise Village, ECD, Demerara-Mahaica Region
- Rehabilitation of Children’s Playgrounds – Blairmont & Shieldstown.
