Criticising Kaieteur News..
PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo said Friday that Kaieteur News needs some schooling to understand how the tendering process for contracts works.

“Maybe I need to spend a little more time speaking to Kaieteur News about the tendering process… I think that you need some education about how this works,” the Head of State said in response to a question, by a reporter from that newspaper, on whether there are discrepancies in the awarding of contracts.

Speaking at a media briefing in State House, Mr. Jagdeo explained that Guyana receives loans and grants from several agencies and each has its own procurement rules which are different from that of this Government.

“We are using their funds. We have to use their procurement rules. In some cases, you have an open tender and you have a point system. The person who gets the highest point based on technical capacity and also price, they get the contract.

“In other cases, it is just the lowest price, after you would have pre-qualified. In another situation, like with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), you have a two-envelope system. You had that in the past, where you only open the envelope for the highest ranked bidder.

“So the highest ranked bidder on technical terms might have the highest bid in financial terms but you don’t get to open the other bid for the other bidders, because they are the highest ranked firm. You have to negotiate with them and only when the negotiation fails you can go to the second ranked firm and open their financial envelope. Our laws say the lowest evaluated bid,” he pointed out.

Secret
President Jagdeo said there was a time when engineers’ estimates were secret and many could have been corrupt.

He noted that, “if there were three bidders, they would say they have a point system where the closer you get to the engineer’s estimate, the highest point you get.

“The contractor who knows the engineer’s estimate had an advantage over his colleagues and many used to pass bribes to get the information.

“Today the engineer’s estimate is just a guide, which every contractor should know about, even before the bid, as the lowest evaluated bid is chosen.

“So, if you know the engineer’s estimate, it does not matter to us. It is the lowest evaluated bid through a public competitive process, a sealed process that we go through.

“So a man can easily come like Kaieteur News and say we will get the pump. We define the specification of the pump and we go out to tender. And everyone has the right to tender. We go with the lowest price once the people meet the specifications.

“So Kaieteur News comes along and say we could have gotten it for a $100 cheaper or $10M cheaper. We don’t know if it is the same specification and secondly, we are saying that, if you could have gotten it for $100 or $10M cheaper, why not put in a bid? Because we have to operate based on bids,” the President outlined.

He said it is ironic that Kaieteur News wants the Government to be transparent but “wants us to call, the Minister or Permanent Secretary must call around and say ‘what price you will give me boy?’ or Kaieteur News, what price can you find it for?”

Transparency
President Jagdeo said such a situation will not allow for any transparency and maintained that the only transparent system will be through a public tender.

He conceded that there may be times when the lowest public tender is higher than the actual price but maintained that the current system prevents corruption because “no one in the Government calls the people and say we are buying it from you or you.

“You need to understand that whether we get ripped off, sometimes where we buy things because of the tender is higher than the actual price or the tender makes a huge profit, there may be circumstances where this happens but it is procured through a public tender,” President Jagdeo clarified.

He acknowledged that he cannot put his head on the line for every contractor or government officer in the country but said, unlike in the past, when the People’s National Congress (PNC) administration restricted the Auditor General from auditing some contracts, today that office can audit any contract in the country.

But, even when they are auditing, like the bridge Kaieteur News claimed was built recently when it was constructed a decade ago and not under the project that the newspaper is saying and “you didn’t have the decency, in Kaieteur News, to retract the story.

“Kaieteur News just puts a photo up, regardless of whether it is true or not. When they get a response, they never carry the response. The next day is a new photo that goes up. It’s a campaign, it is not reporting.

“I expect that journalists, at least, would have some modicum of commonsense, if they are writing a story. They have to understand the procurement rules. So read up on the procurement rules,” he urged Kaieteur News.