Former REO can’t remember how $63M in contracts were awarded without public tendering

Apr 09, 2024 News

Former Regional Executive Officer (REO) of Region Two, Denis Jaikaran

– tells PAC his knowledge on tendering procedures was thrown out the window when he left office

Kaieteur News – Former Regional Executive Officer (REO) of Region Two, Denis Jaikaran was on Monday unable to provide answers to the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) how several contracts valuing $63.188 million was awarded without going through the public tendering process under his tenure.

The PAC, Chaired by Member of Parliament (MP) Jermaine Figueira was on Monday scrutinising the findings of the 2019 Auditor General (AG) Report for Regional Democratic Council (RDC) of Region Two. In the report, it stated that the “Procurement Regulations state the limit for requesting of quotations is $3M. However, the Regional Administration breached the regulations when they awarded seven contracts totalling $63.188M to various suppliers by means of obtaining quotations instead of subjecting these contracts to open tendering…”

The AG’s report also stated that the region had responded saying “The Head of Budget Agency indicated that restrictive tendering was used; however, it was not properly documented and, as such, appeared as if the three-quote system was used instead.”

Table showing the seven contract totalling $63.188 million.

PAC member and MP, Juan Edghill asked the Former REO why he used the quotation system for capital projects in excess of $3 million which was in clear breach of the procurement acts. In response, Jaikaran who appeared virtually said: “I don’t recall at this stage, why a three-quote system would have been used and it is difficult for me to make any assumption which I don’t want to make and to answer that question, all I would say I cannot recall why is it a three-quote system was used.”

Edghill went onto state that there were seven contracts totalling $63.188 million that were awarded in 2019. He noted that the AG found that one of the projects, which is for the construction of a sanitary block at Suddie Primary School the contract sum was $10.861 million and had five quotations. He went on to highlight that in this instance, a quotation system cannot be used for this process since it passed the three quote limit. Edghill then asked former REO “how did we get these five persons who we requested the quotations from? We already outside of the quotation limit but how did we determine who we asked for quotations?”

In his answer once again, Jaikaran said “I don’t recall at this stage.”

Reminding the Former REO of his response to the AG office back then, Edghill then said “The former REO seems to be very aware of the laws and processes that have to be followed, could he highlight to the PAC what is his understanding of what is restrictive tendering?”

In answering the question, Jaikaran said “Mr. Chairman that question that is now posed to me, I want to remind the member that I am a private citizen and when I was REO, if that question was posed to me I would have been in a better position to better understand and answer the question. But at this stage I don’t have any information, I throw those information through the window since 2020 when I left office and I don’t look back at procurement procedures.” Not getting an answer to the questions posed, PAC member Edghill then asked that the committee be provided with all the names of the suppliers who were invited to provide quotations and the names of the contractors who were awarded the contracts without the procurement process. Also that the PAC be provided the names of the evaluation officers at the time, Edghill added. This information will be provided at the next sitting of the PAC, Kaieteur News understands.

contracts, Denis Jaikaran, Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, public tendering, without

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