The $393 million Versailles A–Line pump station contract which the NPTAB awarded to Yunas Civil & Building Construction Service in September has been terminated following an objection from the Ministry of Agriculture which cited past errant works of the contractor.
“We wrote to tender board objecting and it was terminated and has to be retendered or they will determine if it will go to the next contractor,” Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha told the Sunday Stabroek when contacted for an update on the contract.
Mustapha proclaimed that should in the future any contractor who was delinquent with projects be found to have gotten awards, he is going to object.
“I am going to object to all delinquent contractors,” he declared, saying that when works fail he, as subject minister, would have to answer and thus wants them to know that he was not holding the burden for anyone.
The minister disclosed that the objection to the award was due to the past experience the company has had with the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) with regard to incomplete works done. Yunas’s $978m contract for a pump station at Black Bush Polder, Corentyne was terminated in October last year.
The award in September 2024 to Yunas will raise further questions about what is transpiring at the NPTAB. Evaluation committees at the NPTAB have been accused of making injudicious decisions. In this case the NPTAB and the evaluation committee should have been aware that Yunas had been removed just a year before from a pump station contract in Berbice. It also raises the question as to why the NPTAB is not keeping a register of contractors who have encountered difficulties so that its evaluation committees could be suitably guided. Before the contract award is made, the procuring agency, in this case the NDIA, is given an opportunity to indicate its acceptance. It doesn’t appear that that happened in this case.
The National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) says that the law provides for penalties after an award, among them termination, if pertinent information was not declared, was falsified, or is later brought to the attention of the Board showing contrary findings of the contractor.
NPTAB Chairman, Tarachand Balgobin, told the Sunday Stabroek that he was not familiar with that specific contract, but speaking from a vantage point of principle and not specificity, a procuring entity can object to an award with cited grounds.
“If a person tenders for a job and all the material facts were not clear and the evaluators made a decision and subsequently, information becomes available that mitigates against that award, it can be overturned,” Balgobin explain-ed to this newspaper.
“…If a bidder falsifies information which led to an award and after which said falsified information is found, the bidder can be penalised, and that includes terminating the contract…,” he added.
He noted that when evaluators are assessing bidding documents, they are doing so from the information beforehand and it is not a part of their job portfolios to “call and verify” information provided. This is because bidding documents clearly have a clause which notifies bidders that they are signing to submitting “the truth and nothing but the truth.”
“Bidding documents have a declaration that says that you are signing that all the information you provide is the truth. So if you say you have $100 million in the bank and it is found that you only have $80 million, that is not the truth and you can face penalties. If you said you have 10 machines and then it is found that you only have one, then you [have] falsified the information you provided and you can be penalized,” he reasoned.
Yunas Civil and Building Construction’s $978 million contract for a pump station at Black Bush Polder (BBP), Corentyne was terminated by the Ministry of Agriculture in September of last year for shoddy work, but this October, NPTAB notified that it had awarded a $393 million contract to the same company to build another pump station, this time at Versailles, West Bank Demerara. The A-Line Versailles contract had also been one that was terminated after it was awarded to Civcon Engineering Contractors, hence, the retender.
In April this year, it was announced that liquidated damages were being applied against Civcon Engineering Contractors for failing to complete the construction.
It was following questions raised by APNU+AFC MP, Ganesh Mahipaul, about a number of delays on works for pump station contracts last year that the Black Bush Polder termination was announced.
“With regards to the construction of the drainage pump station to irrigate Black Bush Polder farmlands, Region No. 6, this project was terminated on September 25, 2023 by the NDIA for poor quality and performance of works being executed. This project will soon be retendered”, the NDIA had said in response to Mahipaul’s questions.
The Ministry had said the NDIA, acting on the advice and recommendation of its “experienced” consultants took a decision to terminate the contract for the Black Bush Polder pump station, claiming several technical breaches by the contractor, Yunas Civil and Building Contracting Services.
Though a release, it noted that the consultant’s recommendation was based on the failure by the contractor to address breaches of the contract, continually combined with the failure of the contractor to execute works in accordance with the contract, allied with the continued failure over the duration of the project to achieve the scheduled progress of works in accordance with the approved work programme, which altogether amounted to a fundamental breach of the contract.
Delving deeper, it also stated that several clauses of the contract also continued to be breached, such as the employment of key personnel – a requirement under the contract. And as it relates to design specifications, a number of discrepancies were observed with the reinforcement of the pile caps. It was also observed that no dowel bars were installed on a number of piles even though casting was ongoing and the spacing between the reinforcement bars was inconsistent with the drawings. This, it was explained, further compounded non-compliance with technical specifications and construction drawings for the project.
The Ministry of Agriculture also pointed out that the concrete compressive test showed that the concrete strength did not meet the standard, which meant that the steel rods that were installed would have to be removed by breaking out the concrete and replacing them at the cost to the contractor. As such, given the circumstances, the decision was taken to terminate the project.
