NPTAB: rigidity and flexibility

Apr 29, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – The National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) is due a break, several of them. The Opposition says that an investigation is due. I started out thinking that NPTAB was due for a thorough housecleaning and all hands shown the exits. I adjusted my thinking. Let us all calm down and look at what is happening to the few principled folks at NPTAB: they are lumped with bad eggs, they are getting an undeserved bad name, and they are denounced by every Tom, Dick, and Harry. The trio includes those who don’t know what a tender board does versus what a fire tender is. Just about when the people at NPTAB were thinking that the worst was over, and they could breathe easier, entered the nation’s chief policymaker, one Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo. He has a menu of prescriptions for NPTAB, with each medicine on the bitter side, and sure to cause side effects, especially headaches.
The first thing that the political creature Jagdeo did was remove politicians from contract award proceedings. It is a smart move; NPTAB approves, Cabinet issues something called a no-objection. In most cases, the Cabinet doesn’t have a clue about what it is not objecting to; this is not saying that its members are dumb, though it is tempting.
But the bid winners that Cabinet would have objected are already gone, as in eliminated. What I think that Jagdeo did was publicized that cabinet had no real role in NPTAB contract awards, so angry citizens should look elsewhere. As moves go, it is smooth.

The Cabinet has some vague authority but, thanks to the chief policymaker, it has no duty re contract approvals. This is one silky policy declaration. Of course, in Guyana’s world of tenders and evaluations and approvals, many cabinet members would have already made known what they are thinking and who is favored (through channels), so there is nothing to object to when NPTAB files come before them. In other words, people in the Cabinet get to object before anything reaches them. If anybody believes that Guyana operates differently, they are due a new head. Here is a little litmus test: why is it that some contract approvals out of NPTAB reek of roguery from time to time, and which defies any kind of justification?
The process is either not working as it should; or it is not being allowed to do so. Interference. Influence. Strange coincidence. Stranger confluence of events and people. NPTAB is bolstered by procedures, but they are just that, pronouncements on paper that mean less than what they say.
The people to see processes and procedures for what they are, and how they should be implemented, are of the kind that delights the PPP Government and its insiders. They know how business is done in this country, except that ever so often some awards are so horrendous that the dam collapses under the weight of their mysteries.
The Tepui pump station contract award was one such dam bursting award. Now there is a whole boombox level of noise.
To soothe the clamor, policymaker Jagdeo came up with two quasi policies for NPTAB. First, he was for the evaluation criteria to be rigidly followed. Hats off to the big policy and standards man! Spoken like a man that is serious.
Then Jagdeo wouldn’t be Jagdeo if he didn’t mix matters up a bit. He also said from the other side of his mouth that there should be some flexibility to the evaluation criteria, to give those who fell short of the requirements a chance. There must be rigidity and there must be flexibility. Only a political operator of the caliber of Jagdeo could get away with defying the laws of physics. His peculiar form of political and business sciences makes mincemeat of the natural sciences. In addition to speaking from two sides of his mouth all at once, Jagdeo smartly inserted an element into the evaluation criteria process that I give a one-word label: discretionary.

The flexibility that he is pushing is a substitute for discretionary.
And discretionary is what opens the door for any number of skullduggeries and sleights of hand to pass through on a selective basis. What is there not to like about that from a politician’s perspective?
When flexibility is built into the rigid evaluation criteria that he touted, then anything can happen, anyone can qualify. Why, I could qualify to build that new Demerara River Bridge.
Or the Exxon state of the art Guyana High Command skyscraper and spy center. Flexibility in NPTAB’s evaluation criteria gives it the cover to decide arbitrarily, to finalize contracts capriciously. And recall that since Jagdeo was slick enough to extricate Cabinet from that three-ring circus, NPTAB would be on its own, with its marching orders. I like this setup. It was the ancient Chinese who said that out of crisis comes Christmas.
From the catastrophe that is the Tepui contract award, lessons are learned, policies adjusted, to pave the way in the future via official clearance from the top. This is how a word like discretionary gets a dirty rap. To cover all his bases, Jagdeo ensured that he went on record to say that NPTAB could revoke the Tepui contract. Perhaps, NPTAB should deftly pick up that smoking gun. (The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• Bharrat Jagdeo, Demerara River Bridge, National Procurement and Tender Administration Board, Tepui pump station

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