Bias and/or incompetence accusations levelled at Ministry of Agriculture

Dear Editor,
In an Article which appeared in the news media on Oct 28, it was reported that Charles Ceres of Ground Structures Engineering Consultants, Inc stated that with respect to his bid for consultancy service to supervise reconstruction of an earthen dam in the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC), the Evaluation Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) rejected his submission on the ground that its technical approach and methodology did not take into consideration the approved construction supervision and quality assurance plan as laid out in the bidding document.
The Evaluation Committee further discounted Ceres’s claim that the project was geotechnical engineering based since the project’s main objective was to supervise the reconstruction of an earthen dam based on the drawing and specifications submitted to the bidders.
There is no doubt that geotechnical experience by the successful bidder would have been helpful in executing this earthen dam project. However, in the final analysis, the consultants would have had to follow the requirements of the contract documents and prepare their bids accordingly.
In response to the rejection of his bid, Ceres questioned the fairness of the tender process and felt that the Evaluation Committee of the MoA was either biased or technical incompetent in its analysis of the bids it received for this project.
This conclusion was unfortunate as this is a World Bank (WB) funded project and therefore the MoA is obligated to adhere to the WB’s guidelines for the selection of consultants. Further, it appears Ceres misinterpreted the bidding documents as the project required consultants with experience to reconstruct earthen dams and not specifically with geotechnical expertise as he claimed.
Ceres cannot lodge any complaint concerning his bid directly to the WB until the bids are opened and presented by the MoA to the WB with recommendations for an award. He will have to submit his protest to the WB thru’ Guyana’s Director on the WB who will then determine its merit for submission to WB management and board of directors for eventual review and consideration for contract award.
It will be helpful regarding Ceres’s contention if he could obtain a copy of the bidders’ evaluation by the Evaluation Committee to compare the scores received by each of them under the various items of the WB-listed requirements particularly those of the local consultants vis-a-vis the foreign ones.
He is conversant with the competency, resources and experience of the local consultants to undertake this project and whose performance on the various Government of Guyana projects they executed are well documented. The scores will indicate whether there was indeed bias or lack of competency by the MoA in the award of this contract. If there was any ‘hanky panky’ in analysis of the bids by the MoA, the WB’s team reviewing the bids will surely pick this up and act accordingly.

Yours truly,
Charles Sohan