AFC’s Press Release on recent ruling by PPC’s on Tepui award of the $865M Belle Vue Pump Station.

The AFC regards the recent majority recommendation of the PPC, after the complaint by its Executive member and Parliamentarian Mr. David Patterson, as shamelessly objectionable, unfair and yet another knockdown of a guardrail of our fragile democracy.

What has been hidden from the public is that the purported Summary of Findings comprises of only a majority recommendation of Ms. Chase, Mr. Bhagwandin and Mr. Singh. The minority recommendation of Ms. Rajcumar and Mr. Berkley Wickham is vastly different. All five Commissioners agreed that Tepui on all counts was been guilty of serious evaluation disqualifications. Tepui’s bid failed grievously on every evaluation criteria as found unanimously by 5 Commissioners.

The minority recommendation is that, and which is not captured in the Summary of Findings, the Tepui bid must be deemed non-responsive and should be retendered.

The AFC finds it amazing that a bid which did not meet any of the evaluation criteria could have been passed by the Evaluation Committee, then NPTAB and then find blessings and approval by Cabinet.

The AFC does not know the names of the members of the Evaluation Committee. However, their names must not be an official secret. The public has a right to know who they are. The AFC is aware that the head of NPTAB is Mr. Tarachand Balgobin, who has a senior advisory role at the Ministry of Finance as Deputy National Authorising Officer and head of its Public Investment Unit. A conflict of interest is most noticeable here. Also,it is well known that Tepui’s owner is a close friend of Vice President Jagdeo. There is an undoubted confluence of interests and relationships here that mattered more than the merits of the Tepui bid.

The AFC believes that the majority recommendation of the PPC only ruined matters more when it determined that it cannot propose any remedial action pursuant to a massive misapplication of privity of contract. This kind of misconceived “lenience” ought to have come only from the interested parties who want to see the award go to a friend. It should never have come from a constitutional body which was fought long and hard for to be a check and balanced against Executive lawlessness in procurement matters.

The AFC finds the legal device of privity of contract (by the three Commissioners) to allow the award, which ought to have been vitiated ab initio, as an abomination and an abdication of their duty to protect against fraud and corruption in procurement matters. They abandon their power under article 212 AA (1)(h) and (i) which provides explicitly that they investigate complaints, and in cases of irregularity and mismanagement and “to propose remedial action”.

Additionally, to use another device that the complaint was not brought by any competing bidder, but a civic-minded citizen, to deliberately avoid the remedy of voiding the award is an affront to the rule of law. By doing and rationalising as they did, those three Commissioners being so excessively differential became an arm of the Executive, rather than a check and balance as was intended by the framers of the Constitution. They heeded not the prescription of the Supreme law of the land, but found succour in common law precepts of privity of contract and improper party to legalize an illegality.

The AFC feels that this sort of rationalisation, and exposition of reasons, demands the immediate resignation of those three Commissioners. Additionally, NPTAB must be reconstituted. The irony of it all is that they are being paid hundreds of millions to grant a disqualified tenderer/bidder a $865 million contract.

This certainly disqualifies them.

End