The guardian of state coffers doesn’t seem to be weary of skirting on thin ice. Previously it was pertaining to bids being cancelled on Kalpitiya Integrated Tourism Resort Project (KITRP) and prospective parties raising concerns as to why they were called in the first place. This time it is a serious issue of conflict relating to a senior Treasury official creating chaos over tender procedures for a tourism-related sanitation project in eastern Pasikudah, according to well-informed sources.
“A senior Treasury official was discovered to be a consultant of a company called Natural Solutions which had bid for a tender along with five other parties for this project. This particular firm’s bid was initially rejected by the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) as they had not fulfilled a basic Request for Proposal (RFP) condition. The official was also the Chairman of the TEC, which was short-listing these candidates to the Procurement Committee (PC),” one source told the Business Times.
He said that this official had pushed for this firm to be included in the short-list, saying that the deviation from the RFP was not a ‘serious’ one. Finally the PC got wind of this official’s involvement and had rejected Natural Solution’s proposal.
The rest of the applicants are questioning the moral obligation of the Treasury official and the ‘audacity’ to try and arm-twist a rejected firm, and are awaiting a decision on this one which they fear may also end up similar to the KITRP. |
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