Gail Alexan­der

Fron­trun­ners in the scrapped Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) ten­der, Gopaul and Com­pa­ny Ltd (GCL) and CDS Trans­port, each have con­firmed they would bid for the con­tract again if and when the ten­der was re-is­sued. Ralph Gopaul, of GCL, con­firmed his po­si­tion while at­tor­ney for CDS Trans­port, Mar­tin George, said CDS al­so like­ly would bid again. Both spoke yes­ter­day fol­low­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan's con­fir­ma­tion the ten­der for the con­tro­ver­sial $40 mil­lion con­tract had been scrapped. Ram­lo­gan re­vealed a re­port on the is­sue, not­ing in­con­sis­ten­cies in the process and oth­er flaws.

He said there was no ev­i­dence of ill-in­tent on NP's part. Ram­lo­gan al­so said a file on the mat­ter had gone miss­ing.

He had man­dat­ed the re­port af­ter the Op­po­si­tion and oth­er quar­ters raised queries about the award.

PNM Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds had not­ed that Gopaul owned a Tu­na­puna house where Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar stayed af­ter the May 2010 elec­tion. Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed a friend­ship with Gopaul. The con­tract award and Per­sad-Bisses­sar's con­duct in the mat­ter are now un­der In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion probe fol­low­ing a re­quest by Hinds. CDS, which had the NP con­tract for ten years pre­vi­ous­ly, al­so had raised ques­tions af­ter it was of­fered a split con­tract with GCL. CDS had sent Gov­ern­ment a pre-pro­to­col ac­tion let­ter on the is­sue. Hinds said yes­ter­day: "I'm not sur­prised. They've scrapped the ten­der process be­cause we've al­ways held the view that a lot im­prop­er has gone wrong there.

"How­ev­er, I'm not pre­pared to take the AG's word or his Gov­ern­ment's that this sit­u­a­tion was a mis­take or was with­out bad in­tent on any­one's part be­cause we've said in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al could not be deemed in­de­pen­dent. His state­ments leave more ques­tions than an­swers at this point."

Hinds added: "We al­so want to know which file has gone miss­ing and when it did. "I'm hop­ing it is not a file that the Op­po­si­tion sought to ac­cess un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act. So I'm more wor­ried. This may be a larg­er plot be­ing cov­ered up." Yes­ter­day Gopaul, who was "ab­sorb­ing the AG's an­nounce­ment," said: "Cer­tain­ly, we'll re­tender. We put in the low­est bid when it was is­sued and we have all the re­quire­ments from the nec­es­sary site to mech­a­nisms and oth­er cri­te­ria."

George said: "I can on­ly imag­ine my client (CDS) will bid again. I see no rea­son why they shouldn't.

"We feel vin­di­cat­ed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's stance and we com­mend him for be­ing so forth­right in de­clar­ing the process was flawed and could not go for­ward with an award at this stage. "It's a les­son not on­ly for NP but all state boards pre­sid­ing over mil­lions of dol­lars worth of con­tracts." He added: "The les­son is they need to be scrupu­lous, dili­gent, ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient in analy­ses and in­ter­pre­ta­tion of all bid pro­ce­dures to en­sure fair­ness, trans­paren­cy and eq­ui­ty at all times." George re­it­er­at­ed his call for clear guide­lines for State boards re­gard­ing con­tracts.