Cabinet and NPTAB are accountable for approving $865M pump station contract to ‘Guyanese Critic’ – Former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran  

Apr 23, 2024 News

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Kaieteur News – Former Auditor General (AG), Anand Goolsarran has noted that given their oversight role, the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB), and Cabinet should both be held accountable for overlooking evaluation breaches in the $865 million pump station contract.

The contract handed to Tepui, the company closely linked to social media personality, ‘Guyanese Critic’ was the subject of an investigation by Public Procurement Commission (PPC) over the past six months.

Goolsarran’s comments come days after Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo at a press conference, blamed the evaluation team for the procurement breaches found in the handing out of a $865M pump station contract to Tepui. However, Goolsarran in his column ‘Accountability Watch,’ published in the Stabroek News on Monday pointed out that while the blame is been thrown on the evaluation team for approving the company’s bid, both NPTAB and Cabinet also hold similar functions.

He pointed out too that the procuring entity- the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) turned a blind eye to the breaches of the company. In his review on the report by the Public Procurement Commission (PPC), the former AG pointed out that while the PPC made 13 recommendations as a form of remedial action, however, there was no mention of any recommendation as regard sanctions being imposed on member if the evaluation committee for their failure to adhere to the requirements of documents relating to bidders’ experience.

Goolsarran questioned NPTAB’s role in the process of approving the bid. “And what of 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 assurance systems?”

Goolsarran continued “Surely NPTAB is not a post office accepting evaluation reports without examining them to ensure that all the laid requirements have been followed and the determination as to the lowest evaluated bids can stand the test of independent scrutiny.” He added that “This is especially so, considering that NPTAB is required to prepare a streamlined tender evaluation report to cabinet to enable it to issue its no objection to the proposed award.”

As it regards Cabinet, Goolsarran noted that Section 54 (2) requires Cabinet to object to the award of the procurement contract if it determines that the procuring entity failed to comply with applicable procurement procedures.

“That apart,” the former Auditor General noted that “Section 51 (1) requires Cabinet and the PPC to review annually the cabinet’s threshold over time so as to promote the goal of progressively phasing out the Cabinet involvement and decentralising the procurement process.”

“[However] after almost eight years since the PPC became operationalised, there is no evidence of any caution taken to implement this requirement.”

Additionally, the former AG said that the procuring entity NDIA also failed to object to evaluation given the breaches. “By Section 39 (3) if the procuring entity does not agree with the evaluation committee determination as to the lowest evaluated bid 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.”

Jagdeo at his press conference while noting the report by the PPC said that the entity did not recommend the cancellation of the contract.

The VP responded, “It didn’t say breach, however, it pointed out the application for evaluation criteria; an evaluation criterion that was outlined in the bid that there was not a perfect kind of application or in this bid’s case, the evaluation criteria.” Jagdeo then sought to defend the awarding of the contract to Tepui by saying most of it was transparent and that the findings show that there is a functioning PPC under his government than was under the past administration.

“One thing was clear and that is there was a public tender for all of the 19 pump stations that were being built across the country including the one under review by the PPC,” Jagdeo said before adding “that an evaluation committee consistent with the Public Procurement Act was established. It was a multi-agency evaluation Committee”.

“So I asked who the evaluators were today and they sent me this document,” he continued before naming the evaluators. “The evaluators were Randy Beckles, he was the coordinator for the particular project and he is the procurement officer from the GNBS (Guyana National Bureau of Standards), Miss Shabbana Omar, a civil engineer at the BNTF, Ministry of Finance and Mr. Larry Karrel at the ASDU (a unit at the Ministry of Agriculture). These were the three evaluators so they completed their evaluation report and then the report was sent to NPTAB and then it went to the Cabinet for a no objection,” Jagdeo said. He also told the media that while it is good that it focuses on the transparency of the handing out of contracts, it must also shed light on the implementation and completion of projects by his government along with the benefits it brings to the populace of Guyana.

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• Auditor General, Goolsarran, Guyanese Critic, PPC, station

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