Richard Lord

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says the ten­der­ing process for Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um's (NP) $40 mil­lion trans­port con­tract must be quashed and fresh bid­ding should be in­vit­ed. He said that rec­om­men­da­tion was made to, and ac­cept­ed by Cab­i­net yes­ter­day. Ram­lo­gan spoke dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair. He said the process was "un­ten­able and I have ad­vised that the en­tire process be quashed and the ten­der for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the fu­el be ten­dered afresh." The AG added: "It will not be the first time that we will be crack­ing the whip."

He said the first time was when Per­sad-Bisses­sar stopped the award of a con­tract to light up the Pi­ar­co Air­port with­out a board be­ing in place. He said the ten­der­ing process was flawed and the de­ci­sion was tak­en to have the bids re­tendered. Ram­lo­gan said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and the coun­try would not lose in any way by hav­ing the project squashed and bids re­opened. He said he was pre­pared, will­ing and able to de­fend his de­ci­sion to quash the en­tire process. Ram­lo­gan said there were a num­ber of in­ac­cu­ra­cies in the me­dia over the ten­der process.

He said up to yes­ter­day, Gopaul and Co, the pre­ferred bid­der, had not reg­is­tered as an NP con­trac­tor.

He said the ex­ist­ing firm CDS Trans­port would now con­tin­ue to op­er­ate on a month-to-month ba­sis, pend­ing the award of a new con­tract. The mat­ter was brought to the pub­lic af­ter Gopaul and Co, owned by Ralph Gopaul, be­came the pre­ferr ed bid­der. CDS, which had the NP con­tract for ten years pre­vi­ous­ly, had sent the Gov­ern­ment a pre-pro­to­col ac­tion let­ter on the is­sue. Prime Min­is­ter Kalma Per­sad-Bisses­sar stayed at Gopaul's home be­fore and af­ter the May 24, 2010, gen­er­al elec­tion. The Op­po­si­tion PNM had re­ferred Per­sad-Bisses­sar to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion un­der Sec­tion 27 (1) of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act over the mat­ter.

The AG said the move to link Per­sad-Bisses­sar's stay at Gopaul's home with the se­lec­tion of his com­pa­ny as the pre­ferred bid­der was ab­surd. "The minute you be­come a pub­lic of­fi­cial, you must go and live in a cave some­where and have no form of hu­man in­ter­course as well as oth­er (pause)... forms," Ram­lo­gan said. He said NP's Man­age­ment Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee, which re­viewed the bids, was in­con­sis­tent in its re­port. "It was im­pos­si­ble to rec­on­cile or ra­tio­nalise the score giv­en to CDS with the com­ments that they made," he stressed. He said the trucks be­ing used by CDS left a lot to be de­sired.

Ram­lo­gan said no con­tract had been award­ed. He said there were in­con­sis­ten­cies and ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the process that led to the se­lec­tion of a pre­ferred bid­der. He said none of the bids com­plied with the ten­der re­quire­ments. "For the man­age­ment of NP to even go for­ward to con­sid­er the bids was, in my view, wrong," he said.