Latest update March 24th, 2025 7:05 AM
GPHC buckles up to avoid procurement anomalies
-Tenders for medical supplies ahead of New Year
Ahead of the New Year, the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) is ensuring that the
GPHC’s Chief Executive Officer, Brigadier (ret’d) George Lewis
issues it faced earlier this year do not reoccur. To do so, plans have been drafted to ensure that suppliers submit bids for medical supplies before the reading of bids for the project at the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB).
As advertised in Sunday’s edition of Kaieteur News, GPHC invited bids for eligible bidders to submit bids for the procurement of medical supplies in 2018. The Hospital is embracing efforts to avoid the issues it experienced earlier this year, when it went ahead and accepted the bid of a procuring entity without permission from NPTAB.
This procurement was found in breach of the Procurement Act, given that the bids exceeded $15 million. The project, as a matter of fact, was valued at $631 million for emergency pharmaceuticals.
Red flags were raised regarding the procurement, since the Procurement Act stipulates that any contract beyond the sum of $15 million must go through NPTAB, which then forwards it to Cabinet for review and approval.
Although the emergency was found to be legitimate, evidence suggested that due process was not followed.
In its own investigation, Ms. Kesaundra Alves- Chairperson of the hospital board, found that the former Acting CEO had written to NPTAB seeking approval for the contracts, after GPHC had begun to receive pharmaceuticals from the suppliers.
Coming out from the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) investigation was that Public Health Minister Volda Lawrence was not to be blamed for the procurement. It was however concluded that although the Minister is responsible for policy-related matters, she should not be involved in administrative or operational issues, since this is the responsibility of the hospital’s board.
The PPC had also noted that “agencies such as the GPHC should be closely monitored to ensure that tender documents are handled with strict security and confidentiality.”
Added to this, the PPC outlined that the practice of documents being moved around to evaluators’ offices by various personnel should cease immediately.
Further, it was recommended that the time-frame set out in the Act for completion of the tender evaluation should be strictly observed as far as is practicable.
The Public Procurement Commission (PPC), in a report of its findings, pointed out that the GPHC has itself been operating an Agency Tender Board without the approval or input of NPTAB, and this should be addressed urgently, so that this breach ceases.
For this reason, the PPC proposed that “NPTAB should take the required steps to establish an agency tender board that includes representation from the GPHC Board.”
In addition, the PPC outlined that “in view of the specialised nature of the needs of the GPHC, the procurement thresholds of expenditure applicable to the GPHC should be reviewed with the objective of improving efficiency and reducing the need for the entity to make numerous ad hoc purchases, which may breach the Procurement Act.”
Based on the findings of its investigation, the PPC concluded that in order to prevent future breach of the Procurement Act, the GPHC, among other things, must execute all procurement transactions in accordance with the Procurement Act.
As such, the GPHC was urged to “establish appropriate systems to avoid reoccurrences of breaches such as contract splitting and use of procurement methods which are not supported by the Act.”
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