Finance Minister deceived Guyanese

An artist’s impression of the Specialty Hospital

Specialty Hospital Project Flip Flop:

– Fedders Lloyd’s disqualification confirmed, no contract was promised – Ramotar

Finance Minister Winston Jordan deceived Guyanese last week when his Ministry released a two page statement justifying Government’s decision to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with Fedders Lloyd Limited which it claimed was the ”second ranked bidder” in the tender process to select a contractor to build a world-class Specialty Hospital here.

The Ministry made this disclosure even though it was fully aware that that company had been disqualified during the initial tendering process but opted to offer spurious reasons why a new tendering process was not initiated and followed.

Finance Minister Winston Jordan

Following the Administration’s announcement that it was sourcing the building of the hospital to Fedders Lloyd, Guyana Times had reported from the inception that the company was not eligible to be considered as a second-ranked bidder because of certain inconsistencies in its submission to the Tender Board.

Even after that report, Government failed to release the evaluation report to the public but stoutly insisted that the former PPP administration was lying and that Fedders Lloyd was not disqualified.

Contacted for a comment on this development, former Attorney General Anil Nandlall vociferously stated that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) are again vindicated in its contention that Fedders Lloyd was disqualified, the bid was never evaluated and therefore cannot be considered as the second ranked bidder.

In that regard, Nandlall slammed the government for bypassing the transparent process to handpick a contracting company, which is known to have close ties with a senior government official, Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan, to undertake the construction of the specialty hospital.

Nandlall made it clear that he does not have any contentions with Fedders Lloyd and the only problem is government’s approach in contracting the firm.

Moreover, former President Bharrat Jagdeo had hypothetically pointed out that even if Fedders Lloyd is the second ranked bidder, it would still be wholly wrong for that company to conduct an evaluation of the works completed thus far on the Hospital project. He had reasoned:

“…Imagine the previous contractor did some work… we don’t know the cost of the work they did… the right thing to do, the only thing you can do as a government, the transparent thing to do, was to hire an independent company to evaluate how much work was done… the remaining works that need to be done and then go out to tender.”

Jagdeo explained: “So if US$2 million of the US$4 million was spent on the project and Fedders Lloyd came and say they assess it to half a million, then the country gets duped US$ 1.5 million because there is no independent evaluation.”

Promised contract

Reports in another section of the media alleged that Nandlall, former President Donald Ramotar, and former Finance Minister Ashni Singh had met with Fedders Lloyd officials and had assured them of a contract.

Asked to respond to these allegations, Nandlall stated that the report is completely disingenuous.

He explained that he met with representatives of the company on more than one occasion and had numerous discussions.

“The gentleman showed up at the Ministry of Legal Affairs on numerous occasions and out of courtesy, I spoke with him on a number of occasions,” Nandlall explained.

During those discussions, Nandlall said he pointed out to the company that the contract with Surendra Engineering was terminated and that the law dictates that the government go back to tendering. Therefore Nandlall said, he told the official that since Fedders Lloyd was disqualified in the first tender, government cannot simply sign a contract with them without resort to a public procurement process.

Nandlall maintained he never assured Fedders Lloyd that it would be getting a contract: “So it is disingenuous for this gentleman from Fedders Lloyd to convey the impression that a promise was made to him.”

Nandlall pointed out too, that Surendra’s contract was terminated since September 2014, therefore, if government had truly promised a contract to Fedders Lloyd, they had a length of time to do so before the May 2015 General and Regional Elections.

Guyana Times also contacted the former President for a comment and he too denied having promised Fedders Lloyd a contract.

Meanwhile, Guyana Times made numerous efforts on Sunday to contact government officials for a comprehensive explanation on the matter, but all attempts proved futile.

Finance Minister Winston Jordan was out of the country.

Efforts to contact other relevant ministers including Health Minister Dr George Norton, Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan, State Minister Joseph Harmon, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo and Junior Finance Minister Jaipaul Sharma also proved futile.