Former auditor general Anand Goolsarran believes that the Cabinet is required to object to the award of a contract if it determines that the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) failed to comply with the applicable procurement procedures.
In his Accountability Watch column today, Goolsarran highlighted that Section 54 paragraph 2 of the Public Procurement Act 2003 requires the “Cabinet to object to the award of the procurement contract if it determines that the procuring entity failed to comply with applicable procurement procedures”. One example, which Goolsarran dealt with in today’s column was the award of the pump station contract to Tepui Inc, which did not have the requisite experience.
Goolsarran noted that Section 51 (1) of the Act requires the Cabinet and the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) “to review annually the Cabinet’s threshold for review of procurements, intending to increase that threshold over time to promote the goal of progressively phasing out Cabinet involvement and decentralizing the procurement processes”.
He contended that it was almost eight years since the PPC became operationalised, and there was no evidence of any action taken to implement this requirement.
Goolsarran also noted that the Commission made no mention of any recommendations as regards sanctions being imposed on the members of the Evaluation Committee for their failure to adhere to the requirements of the bidding documents relating to bidders’ experience.
“And what of the NPTAB which is responsible for exercising jurisdiction over tenders the value of which exceeds such an amount prescribed by regulations, appointing a pool of evaluators for such period as it may determine, and maintaining efficient record keeping and quality assurances systems?,” Goolsarran questioned.
He argued that NPTAB is not a “post office”, accepting evaluation reports without examining them to ensure that all the laid down requirements have been followed, and the determination as to the lowest evaluated bid can stand the test of independent scrutiny.
“This is especially so, considering that NPTAB is required to prepare a streamlined tender evaluation report for Cabinet to enable it to issue its ‘no objection’ to the proposed award,” he added.
And he also questioned the role of the procuring entity, National Drainage & Irrigation Authority (NDIA) pointing out that Section 39 (3) of the Act states that if the procuring entity does not agree with the Evaluation Committee’s determination as to the lowest evaluated bid, it is required to issue an advisory recommendation to the Evaluation Committee regarding which bidder should be the lowest evaluated bidder, which recommendation the Evaluation Committee must observe.
Following its investigation of the Tepui Inc contract, the PPC recommended that evaluators stick rigidly with the evaluation criteria for tenders. However, as regards Tepui’s non-compliance with the evaluation criteria, the PPC said there was, “nothing within the statutory framework which permits the commission to revoke, rescind, recall and or in any way alter, suspend or stop the contract once entered.”
In its summary of findings issued on Tuesday, six months after a complaint by MP David Patterson, the PPC said that the evaluation committee should be “very meticulous” in its review of bids to ensure that the Procurement Act was not breached.
Quizzed during the PPC’s investigation, the NPTAB, which clearly was not meticulous, spoke of extending “leniency” to contractors and acting on precedence and discretion. There have been calls for the government to act in the face of this blatant non-compliance with the law.
