The Tribune

By DANIEL FERGUSON

I was extremely reluctant to write this article because it is political “silly season”, and at this time whatever one says or does in our polarised country, you are then labelled as being affiliated with a certain party.

However, after much thought I realised it would be remiss of me as a procurement professional not to educate the Bahamian people about the process seemingly used by the Water and Sewerage Corporation in awarding cleaning, maintenance and painting contracts to Elite Maintenance Incorporated Ltd, a company whose legal representative and agent was allegedly the then-fiancée of its executive chairman, Adrian Gibson. Let me borrow a section of the Public Procurement Bill where it clearly states the following:

1. Conflicts of interest.

(1) A person employed in a procuring entity, a member of a tender committee or a member of the Board, who has any conflict of interest in any procurement, or a member of the Tribunal who has any conflict of interest in any appeal before the Tribunal shall— (a) disclose his interest as soon as possible after becoming aware of the procurement or of the appeal; and (b) recuse himself from the evaluation and award of the procurement contract or the appeal.

(2) The disclosure of interest shall be recorded in the records of the procurement or the records of the appeal.

(3) Subsections (1) and (2) shall apply to technical evaluation advisers and to employees of the Department who provide secretarial services to the Board.

(4) For the purposes of this section ‘conflict of interest’ means any situation where a person has, directly or indirectly, a financial, economic or other personal interest which might be perceived to compromise their impartiality and independence in the context of the procurement.

I am not arriving at any conclusions here with respect to these developments at the Water & Sewerage Corporation, and nor am I pronouncing that anyone is guilty of wrongdoing. But it is simply unacceptable for the executive chairman to think that his answer to the media - that “the Board approved the contracts” - is sufficient for Bahamian taxpayers.

He needs to answer the following questions:

• Did the executive chairman advise the Board that the bid before them was actually from a company that his then-fiancée was involved with as their attorney?

• Did Mr Gibson recuse himself from the meetings during the final decision to award Elite Maintenance Incorporated Ltd with the two contracts?

• Can the executive chairman provide the public with a copy of the minutes of this meeting?

In early May 2018, all government ministries, agencies, departments and state-owned enterprises were advised by the acting financial secretary that the Cabinet had mandated all procurements were to be done on the e-Procurement Supplier Registry. This meant that all tender requests, and bid awards, were to be published on the system.

The Water and Sewerage Corporation procurement process for the contracts subject to this latest controversy was flawed from the beginning because no competitive bidding process was followed. There were no local advertisements placed in the daily newspapers or requests for bids made via the eProcurement Supplier registry.

The Corporation’s general manager, Elwood Donaldson, needs to provide the following information to the public:

• Why was a selective bidding process used to request bids for both the maintenance contract and the painting of the water tower?

• How many companies were invited to bid?

• How many bids were received?

• Were these bids sealed and placed in a secure tender box prior to their opening?

• Can the general manager provide the public with the minutes of the meeting of the team that reviewed the bids?

In my most recent article, I admonished the Ministry of Finance to concentrate more on getting state-owned enterprises such as Bahamas Power & Light (BPL), the Water and Sewerage Corporation and the Public Hospitals Authority (PHA) to utilise the e-procurement supplier registry rather than trying meet a September 1 implementation deadline, which will achieve nothing tangible. We have yet to learn the procurement processes that were used to issue contracts to repair our public schools, road repairs, sidewalks and Government House, just to name a few.

I am not going to make any recommendations as to what should or should not happen. Despite the Act not being enacted as yet, it is the responsibility of every senior official, including Board members in government agencies and enterprises, to engage in procurement best practices in its absence and to be transparent in the process.

Finally, I wish to draw the public’s attention to two sections of the Public Procurement Bill. Section 84 (a) states:

1. Tampering with records or other documents.

Any person who— (a) falsifies, destroys, injures, defaces, removes or conceals any record, or document required to be kept under this Act, commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $100,000 or to a term of imprisonment for five years or to both fine and imprisonment.

Finally Section 85 (a) and (b) states;

1. Offence involving collusion. A person who— (a) is involved in or participates in falsifying a bid; or (b) directly or indirectly influences or attempts to influence procurement in order to obtain an unfair advantage in the award of a procurement contract, commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $100,000 or to a term of imprisonment for five years or to both fine and imprisonment.

Let us wait for the enactment of the Act, which is supposed to happen tomorrow. Then perhaps some of the persons, including our politicians responsible for the procurement of goods services and works, will be more transparent. One must talk less about transparency but rather strive to be transparent.

NB: Daniel Ferguson, a retired chief petty officer with the Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF), is a former procurement officer in the Ministry Health and Ministry of Finance, and former component co-ordinator for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) sponsored public financial management reform project, in particular the public procurement reform. He led the drafting team for the development of the Public Procurement Bill 2021, and public procurement regulations. He is a chartered member of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, with over 25 years of experience in public procurement.