Af­ter be­ing closed for six months fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny of Man­ta Lodge Ho­tel in Spey­side, To­ba­go, a Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP) has fi­nal­ly been ad­ver­tised.

The 24-room ho­tel, which cost tax­pay­ers $27 mil­lion to re­fur­bish, was of­fi­cial­ly hand­ed over to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T Ltd (Ude­cott) in Feb­ru­ary.

THA’s Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine told a dai­ly news­pa­per on Feb­ru­ary 26, that the RFP was ex­pect­ed to go out the fol­low­ing day and stat­ed that it was not sent out be­fore, as it was dif­fi­cult to pre­dict a com­ple­tion date for the project.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to Au­gus­tine and his press sec­re­tary on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions via tele­phone to get a re­sponse on the RFP be­ing sent out six months af­ter the hand­ing over, but to no avail.

On the THA Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties & Trans­porta­tion Face­book page on Mon­day, it placed the ten­der no­tice that the Eco-In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of To­ba­go (E-ID­COT) Ltd in­vit­ed suit­ably qual­i­fied firms to sub­mit ten­ders for ho­tel op­er­a­tor for Man­ta Lodge Ho­tel and Dive Cen­tre.

The no­tice said the ten­der doc­u­ments will be is­sued elec­tron­i­cal­ly to suit­ably qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced providers of the ser­vices re­quired, list­ed in the Pro­cure­ment De­pos­i­to­ry main­tained by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR).

E-ID­COT not­ed that the dead­line for sub­mis­sion of doc­u­ments and ap­pli­ca­tions for pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion in the Pro­cure­ment De­pos­i­to­ry, in re­sponse to the pro­cure­ment no­tice, is 4.00 pm on Oc­to­ber 6.

Al­so, pro­po­nents will be re­quired to pay a non-re­fund­able fee of $5,000 to the E-ID­COT’s op­er­at­ing ac­count held at the First Cit­i­zens Bank Ten­der­ing Process.

The com­pa­ny in­di­cat­ed that the con­tract will be award­ed by the pre-de­fined eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria and scor­ing sys­tem out­lined in the bid­ding doc­u­ments.

“The ser­vices to be pro­vid­ed will be gov­erned by the terms and con­di­tions out­lined in the RFP. Pro­pos­als must be com­plet­ed and sub­mit­ted by the in­struc­tions out­lined in the RFP.

“The com­pa­ny re­serves the right to can­cel the present no­tice in its en­tire­ty or par­tial­ly, with­out de­fray­ing any cost in­curred by any firm in sub­mit­ting their pro­pos­als,” E-ID­COT dis­closed.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to sev­er­al To­ba­go stake­hold­ers to get their views on this new de­vel­op­ment.

Pres­i­dent of To­ba­go’s Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, Al­pha Lorde, said that giv­en that it has been sit­ting idle for about six months from the time that it was an­nounced as hav­ing been ful­ly re­stored, it is dis­ap­point­ing that it has tak­en this long to get to this point.

“It might have been more pru­dent to have had the RFP rolled out ei­ther in ad­vance of, or co­in­ci­dent with the an­nounce­ment, made back in Feb­ru­ary. Nonethe­less, we are glad that the process is in mo­tion, and we are hope­ful for a speedy con­clu­sion to the process,” Lorde ex­plained.

Pres­i­dent of The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce (To­ba­go Di­vi­sion) Cur­tis Williams told Busi­ness Guardian it was quite in­ter­est­ing to learn about the de­lay in get­ting the RFP out af­ter the hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny by Ude­cott in Feb­ru­ary this year.

Fur­ther, Williams said the de­lay in open­ing up the ho­tel def­i­nite­ly will have an im­pact on po­ten­tial tourism rev­enue and the cre­ation of jobs on the is­land.

“Ac­cord­ing to the in­for­ma­tion we have, E-ID­COT…was hand­ed this project to man­age with­in the last cou­ple weeks as the project man­ag­er over­see­ing the RFP process.

“We sure­ly would like this process to be ex­pe­dit­ed in the short­est pos­si­ble time be­ing that the build­ing sit­ting un­oc­cu­pied for such a lengthy pe­ri­od could in­cur sig­nif­i­cant costs for main­te­nance and up­keep. We at the cham­ber will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion and keep the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly ac­count­able for its cur­rent af­fairs,” the cham­ber head re­marked.

For­mer To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Di­ane Hadad said the is­land now has to wait and see how long the RFP process will take and the next sur­prise is to see who would be the en­ti­ty cho­sen by the pro­cure­ment process to op­er­ate the ho­tel.

“It baf­fles me why at the stage when the prop­er­ty is com­plet­ed, the rib­bons are cut and de­clared how great it is. It took six months to send out an RFP. I of­ten won­der why it takes so long for us to get some­thing done on the is­land. Or is it that we have to set up the back­ground play, to get to the re­sult the par­ty of the day in charge wants? “ Hadad lament­ed.