DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

De­spite sev­er­al con­trac­tors vow­ing to chal­lenge the in­ten­tion of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to award a con­tract to Chi­nese firm Chi­na Har­bour En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny (CHEC), none have done so. 

On Ju­ly 31, the HDC in­formed the eight oth­er con­trac­tors who bid to con­struct the $475.8 mil­lion San­ta Rosa Hous­ing Project of its in­ten­tion to award CHEC the deal. This sig­nalled the start of a stand­still pe­ri­od which ends on Au­gust 14, giv­ing the com­peti­tors 14 days to chal­lenge the de­ci­sion or lodge a com­plaint. 

How­ev­er, Pro­cure­ment Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go chair­man Bev­er­ly Khan said yes­ter­day that there has been no con­tact from any of the con­trac­tors in­volved. 

“As of to­day, Au­gust 7, we haven’t re­ceived any com­plaints or chal­lenges to the par­tic­u­lar pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ing,” she con­firmed. 

Mean­while, Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC) pres­i­dent Fazir Khan has rub­bished claims that the con­tract award­ed to CHEC was sim­i­lar to the 2019 can­cel­la­tion of a US$72 mil­lion hous­ing con­struc­tion deal with the Chi­na Gezhou­ba Group In­ter­na­tion­al En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny by the Gov­ern­ment. 

This was sug­gest­ed by Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal in a state­ment on Mon­day.

Five years ago, the JCC filed a FOIA re­quest which, com­pound­ed by pub­lic pres­sure, led Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to an­nounce the can­cel­la­tion of the con­tract to con­struct 5,000 apart­ment units at spe­cif­ic sites across Trinidad. He told jour­nal­ists at a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence that the con­tract was re­viewed ex­ten­sive­ly by the Cab­i­net and parts of it did not meet its ac­cep­tance and ap­proval both struc­tural­ly and legal­ly.

How­ev­er, Khan said there is no com­par­i­son to be made.

“To go back to 2019, it’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sce­nario in terms of the le­gal land­scape. So then, there was no pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion as we have it now and the JCC ac­tu­al­ly had to ex­e­cute a free­dom of in­for­ma­tion re­quest in or­der to get the de­tails of that con­tract to be­come pub­lic and then that was not palat­able, and it end­ed up be­ing re­tract­ed,” he said.  

“To­day, any­thing that hap­pens in terms of ten­der­ing is un­der the purview of the reg­u­la­tor and we are wait­ing to see how the due process un­folds be­cause that means that the leg­is­la­tion is work­ing,” he added.  

In 2019, the HDC was not re­quired to no­ti­fy bid­ders un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015, which was on­ly par­tial­ly pro­claimed. The full es­tab­lish­ment of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) oc­curred in 2023.

Ac­cord­ing to the JCC pres­i­dent, the OPR’s stand­still pe­ri­od, which could be no few­er than ten work­ing days and not more than 15, is crit­i­cal for ag­griev­ed con­trac­tors.  
Once the pe­ri­od ex­pires, the HDC will is­sue a no­tice of the de­ci­sion to award the con­tract, pro­vid­ing sup­pli­ers or con­trac­tors with a de­brief­ing on the award de­ci­sion. The award de­ci­sion will in­clude rea­sons for the se­lec­tion, such as the name and ad­dress of the cho­sen sup­pli­er or con­trac­tor, the con­tract price, and the pro­cure­ment method used.

It must al­so spec­i­fy the eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria and scor­ing sys­tem from the so­lic­i­ta­tion doc­u­ment, as well as the scores achieved for each cri­te­ri­on and sub-cri­te­ri­on, the to­tal score of the suc­cess­ful sup­pli­er or con­trac­tor, and the spe­cif­ic bid­der. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it should ex­plain why oth­er bids or pro­pos­als were un­suc­cess­ful.

The OPR can re­view its de­ci­sion dur­ing the stand­still pe­ri­od. The OPR al­so has the dis­cre­tion to sus­pend the pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings with­in three days of re­ceiv­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore the pro­cure­ment con­tract comes in­to force, if it deems such a sus­pen­sion nec­es­sary to pro­tect ap­pli­cants’ in­ter­ests.
In such cas­es, the procur­ing en­ti­ty can­not award the con­tract un­til it re­ceives ap­proval from the OPR.

“There have been ex­am­ples where con­trac­tors al­ready have made sev­er­al com­plaints and the OPR was very trans­par­ent in deal­ing with it. So, we know that they have the sys­tem in place and they have the ca­pac­i­ty to deal with it,” Khan said.  

On Tues­day, Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment should on­ly en­gage for­eign com­pa­nies for ex­per­tise that can­not be found in T&T.
He said this agree­ment with CHEC is un­like­ly to lead to the hir­ing of lo­cal work­ers, which he high­light­ed as a ma­jor con­cern. This was a sim­i­lar wor­ry when Chi­na Gezhou­ba Group In­ter­na­tion­al En­gi­neer­ing was award­ed a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar project.