MINISTER of Agriculture, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy has maintained that there is transparency in the ministry’s tendering process.

peaking at a press conference in its Regent Road, Georgetown boardroom, he said: “We tender our work out and, sometimes, we don’t get a lot of responses. Sometimes people say they don’t know about it, but we have been publishing these things.”
He referred to a particular kind of work, for which the ministry, usually, puts out to tender, to hire contractors to work with its equipment.
“We have a lot of equipment, excavators for example. What we do with these excavators is that we allow private contractors to come. They use our excavators to do our work and it’s a contractor with his/her operators,” Ramsammy explained.
He also pointed out that the contractors are responsible for servicing the machines and keeping them in good condition and are paid, every day, for managing and servicing the equipment and providing excavator operators.
Ramsammy said the excavators working at the Hope Relief Channel are the ministry’s, being operated by a private group.
He added that, presently, there is a newspaper advertisement for tenders which will be open until the first weekend in January 2013.
Not restricting
Ramsammy said, on occasions, people say they do not see the ad but it is there and the ministry is not restricting it.
The Ministry has absolutely no need or desire to restrict the advertising, he remarked.
Ramsammy said he has instructed that these ads be placed on the ministry’s and the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority’s (NDIA’s) websites.
In addition, he has given instructions for the advertisements to be placed in certain public buildings, such as the Parliament Building and electronic copies be sent to every Member of Parliament (MP).
“If anybody has another suggestion of how we could widely circulate those ads, we will do that, too, without question. If somebody feels that we should take it into a particular rum shop, I will do that without question, because I want to make sure that whatever we do is transparent and open to everybody,” Ramsammy emphasised.
However, the minister insisted that, to be eligible for the contracts, persons would have to prove that they have excavator operators, technicians and mechanics, in addition to meeting the other requirements.