The de­ci­sion by the Gov­ern­ment, as an­nounced by Min­is­ter of Plan­ning Dr Bhoe Tewarie, of an agree­ment to pur­sue a de­vel­op­ment plan for one-third of the lands at In­vaders Bay with lo­cal de­vel­op­ers was ap­par­ent­ly meant to ad­dress at least some of the con­cerns raised about the project. In Sep­tem­ber 2011, the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC) aired sev­er­al con­cerns about the bid and pro­cure­ment process for the project.

The JCC cit­ed, among many is­sues, a lack of con­sul­ta­tion with lo­cal stake­hold­ers in the de­sign and con­struc­tion in­dus­try and a dead­line for the re­quest for pro­pos­als (RF­Ps) that at just six weeks, was far too short. The Gov­ern­ment has now agreed to open ne­go­ti­a­tions with lo­cal com­pa­nies Daychin Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Ltd (DCDL) led by Derek Chin and In­vaders Bay Ma­ri­na Ltd's Jer­ry Joseph.

DCDL's Chin had al­ready ar­tic­u­lat­ed in June 2011 a com­pre­hen­sive plan to de­vel­op an ex­ten­sion of his Movi­eTowne project at In­vaders Bay, a 35-acre de­vel­op­ment de­scribed as "Streets of the World," a Dis­ney-like at­trac­tion fea­tur­ing fac­sim­i­les of build­ings and cul­tur­al ar­ti­facts from around the world. Out of ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion at In­vaders Bay is a project by the Fal­con Group who pro­posed a three-tow­er med­ical tourism fa­cil­i­ty.

Ques­tions about pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures have dogged the In­vaders Bay de­vel­op­ment process, and the Gov­ern­ment has done a poor job of meet­ing ex­pec­ta­tions for pub­lic dis­clo­sure in the wake of the UFF In­quiry. While the Plan­ning Min­is­ter claims there was no pref­er­en­tial treat­ment in the process of re­view­ing pro­pos­als, spec­u­la­tion is rife that the Fal­con Group's clear­ly stat­ed lack of in­ter­est in lo­cal in­vest­ment might have in­flu­enced the fi­nal choice.

Sim­ply say­ing that pref­er­ences of any kind, even some­thing as de­fen­si­ble as pre­fer­ring a par­tic­u­lar de­vel­op­ment process for the project, played no part in the fi­nal se­lec­tion of de­vel­op­er is far from of­fer­ing a process for pro­pos­al re­view that clear­ly out­lines the Gov­ern­ment's plans for de­vel­op­ment at In­vaders Bay.

A re­quire­ment that new de­vel­op­ments to match ex­ist­ing projects in the area can­not be a part of any re­al world de­vel­op­ment of valu­able land. The JCC was cor­rect to dis­miss such an as­ser­tion as "an in­ex­plic­a­ble and im­prac­ti­cal re­quire­ment, with ab­solute­ly no ba­sis in prop­er plan­ning prac­tice."

This Gov­ern­ment came to pow­er on a plat­form that ad­vo­cat­ed dra­mat­ic im­prove­ments in trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty for State projects but the an­swers to di­rect ques­tions about the In­vaders Bay project from Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dents in Par­lia­ment have not proven sat­is­fac­to­ry. In Feb­ru­ary, ef­forts at re­draft­ing pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion col­lapsed af­ter the Op­po­si­tion walked out on the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee re­spon­si­ble for re­view­ing and re­vamp­ing ex­ist­ing laws.

Con­front­ed by this sit­u­a­tion, Min­is­ter Tewarie coun­tered that since the In­vaders Bay project was a call for pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment, pro­cure­ment laws did not ap­ply. The JCC al­so con­tends that the ap­point­ment of Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers to han­dle due dili­gence re­view of the pro­pos­als for de­vel­op­ment at In­vaders Bay is flawed, not­ing that it is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board to act on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment in mat­ters of this na­ture.

The Coun­cil ar­gues that ef­forts to ex­tract in­for­ma­tion from the Plan­ning Min­is­ter about the process both di­rect­ly and un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act have been stonewalled, adding more need­less murk­i­ness to the process. The scrap­pi­ness of the process as im­ple­ment­ed so far sug­gests that more at­ten­tion to good pro­cure­ment prac­tices and more em­pha­sis on trans­paren­cy and con­sul­ta­tion in the RFP stage would have served the Gov­ern­ment bet­ter and demon­strat­ed more re­spon­si­ble stew­ard­ship of this valu­able prop­er­ty.

A Gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted to ac­count­abil­i­ty, con­sul­ta­tion and trans­paren­cy can­not con­tin­ue the de­vel­op­ment process at In­vaders Bay on these terms.