Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

A for­mer Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) ex­ec­u­tive, a board mem­ber and a se­nior of­fi­cial have been fin­gered in the bid-rig­ging plot sur­round­ing a $70 mil­lion main­te­nance con­tract. The in­for­ma­tion is the lat­est to sur­face as in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the scrap­ping of con­tract WTC 179/2011 con­tin­ue. The se­nior of­fi­cial is al­leged to have used his po­si­tion to in­tim­i­date eval­u­a­tion team mem­bers to vote against TOSL En­gi­neer­ing Ltd.

An in­sid­er said: "When the first eval­u­a­tion re­port was scrapped, the se­nior of­fi­cial tele­phoned the eval­u­a­tion team mem­ber of the sec­ond team, in­sist­ing he vot­ed against TOSL. "He in­di­cat­ed that his vote was one out of five votes but the se­nior of­fi­cial said a for­mer ex­ec­u­tive who al­so sat on the first eval­u­a­tion team will break the dead­lock. "The work­er felt com­pelled be­cause of his se­nior­i­ty and as a re­sult vot­ed as di­rect­ed."

In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­veal the se­nior of­fi­cial, who was al­so a for­mer man­ag­er of WASA, left the au­thor­i­ty four years ago af­ter his man­age­ment skills came in­to ques­tion. How­ev­er, he was re­hired re­cent­ly un­der for­mer WASA CEO Gan­ga Singh, who was re­cent­ly ap­point­ed as the line min­is­ter for the au­thor­i­ty. Yes­ter­day, Singh told the T&T Guardian he had or­dered an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the bid-rig­ging claims made by WASA chair­man In­dar Ma­haraj and was ex­pect­ing a re­port on his desk by next week.

T&T Guardian fur­ther learned TOSL has is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter against WASA, chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion to scrap the award of the mul­ti-mil­lion con­tract. Ma­haraj claimed the eval­u­a­tion process was com­pro­mised. But TOSL is con­tend­ing that of­fi­cials at WASA had a role to play in ma­nip­u­lat­ing the process, based on the draft re­port from the first eval­u­a­tion team.

The re­port, which was ob­tained by the T&T Guardian, said TOSL was award­ed the con­tract for $65,311,338.25 for main­te­nance works at the Ca­roni, North Oropouche, Navet and Are­na pump­ing sta­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port TOSL topped the eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria ahead of its com­peti­tor, Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices (SIS). In the eval­u­a­tion, TOSL scored 54.99 per cent and SIS 45.01 per cent.

How­ev­er, the se­nior of­fi­cial or­dered the re­port should be scrapped and a sec­ond eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee set up. The sec­ond team favoured SIS and the com­pa­ny was award­ed the job for $69,027,089.45. A re­view of the doc­u­ments found the sec­ond eval­u­a­tion team failed to ad­here to the an­a­lyt­ic hi­er­ar­chy process that formed part of the se­lec­tion process.