The board of T&T Electricity Commission (T&TEC) has maintained it acted properly to ensure the commission's tendering process is above board. It made the declaration in an advertisement published today about the award of an $8 million contract which was unearthed in an investigative report by the Sunday Guardian.
The statement said:?"The entire T&TEC board wishes to make it abundantly clear that they are not prepared to serve as rubber stamps of management's request. "The board has noted with serious concern that when proper procedures are not followed and board objections are made, the information quickly reaches to the print and electronic media for public consumption in a very distorted and biased manner."
In the release, the board requested an apology from this newspaper, claiming that its corporate image was improperly impugned and that the story contained "several serious inaccuracies and misrepresentations." It did not specify what the inaccuracies and misrepresentations were.
The report focused on a contract which was awarded last year for land-acquisition consultancy services to acquire land from Brechin Castle to La Brea Union Estate; Debe to Penal; and San Raphael to Wallerfield to Pinto Road corridors. The contract was eventually awarded to Consortium Land Acquisition Systems Specialists (Class) for a fee of $8,421,105.
The report alleged that the proper tendering process was not followed in the award of the contract as Class was not a legal partnership at the time the contract was awarded but a limited-liability company. T&TEC's evaluation team noted at the time: "The name of the organisation as defined in the information of the tender is not listed as Consortium of Land Acquisition Systems Specialists but refers to Dharamchand Depoo, Vindra Maharaj and Shobna Persad (DMP).
"As stated in DMP's letter of October 21, 2011, the three attorneys will form a partnership, if successful, the commission will enter into an agreement/contract." Contacted by the Sunday Guardian, senior partner of DMP Shobna Persad said: "We have formed a partnership,"?but did not say when the partnership was formed.
The contract was awarded to?ACQ by a tenders committee, headed by T&TEC chairman Omar Khan, who was replaced by Sushilla Ramkissoon-Mark in April this year. Contacted for a response, Khan chose not to comment.
The Sunday Guardian interviewed Ramkissoon-Mark, and quoted her as saying: "Class's delivery time was the shortest. I think they were also amongst the cheapest. In terms of the procurement philosophy of the commission in optimising value for dollar we thought it justified on that basis."
The decision was reportedly taken after the board received legal advice on the issue. The board's statement gives further details to justify the award, adding: "Significant weight was also attached to the fact that the selected partnership of attorneys were experienced attorneys who appeared to the committee to have the requisite capabilities of executing this scope of work."
The Sunday Guardian story also addressed the award of previous contracts to another company, Row Services Ltd, which later formed a partnership called ACQ and Associates. In the story, Ramkissoon-Mark was quoted as being highly critical of the process used to make earlier awards to Row Services.
"No tendering process was followed and no systems were put in place. Basically, it was a runaway horse that could not withstand scrutiny," she said. "As a result, the board moved to put systems in place and introduced a fair system of public tendering whereby this particular contract went out for public tendering."
The advertisement repeated the claim that there were discrepancies in several contracts which T&TEC?had awarded to Row in the past. "Upon taking office on November 2010, the present board was confronted with the matter of very large outstanding payments for Row for land-acquisition services," the release said. Due to the size of the outstanding payments the board initiated an investigation.