Focus Media (Kigali)
Shyaka Kanuma
12 November 2009
At a time when the fight against corruption has intensified, highly questionable decisions still dominate in offers of government contracts.
Recently a bureaucratic body called the National Independent Review Panel headed by one Pascal Ruganintwali overturned a decision by Civil Aviation Authority to award a firm called First Cleaning Company a tender for cleaning work at Kanombe International Airport. Ruganintwali's panel instead handed the contract to a company called Shelter International which the Civil Aviation Authority deems incompetent to do the work.
The law gives the Independent Review Panel powers to overrule government institutions in their tender-awarding decisions regardless of their opinions of who is best suited to offer the required goods or services. It is such powers for instance that (in a case not related to the one we report on here) the Rwanda Public Procurement Authority used to disregard every objection of technicians at Mininfra when it took its by now notorious decision to hand a contract for the repair of two rural roads to a ghost company called BCE Contractors run by a suspect thief called Jean de Dieu Karangira together with his wife and another suspect thief, Felicien Munyaneza. This decision of the RPPA's led to a loss to the taxpayer of 4 billion francs.
First Cleaning Company in the opinion of CAA easily beat every other bidder for the Airport-cleaning contract which was launched in July this year.
In a letter dated 28 August this year a copy which we have, Richard Masozera the director of Civil Aviation Authority informs David Byuzura the managing director of First Cleaning Company: I wish to inform you that your company is successful at this stage of evaluation, but other bidders have full rights to make claims within seven days when they are not satisfied with these provisional results.
In the business of tendering such language generally means you have won and may proceed with the work of supplying required services or goods - which First Cleaning did.
Masozera in a letter to Ruganintwali of the Independent Review Panel says that before taking a final decision to award a tender he had to make sure, as per the law, for CAA to visit premises of the bidders to verify their capabilities.
Masozera's letter says: findings in the visit to the two companies at the final step of evaluation showed that Shelter International cannot perform cleaning services at Kigali International Airport to our satisfaction in line with our core objective of modernization and beautification of the airport: "Vim" was the cleaning chemical found in large quantities; many jerrycans, not labeled, containing chemicals that we could not confirm are used for cleaning, and no innovation in cleaning equipment was found in providing best technology in cleaning services.
Of First Cleaning Company, Masozera had this to say: on the other hand in our visit to First Cleaning Company, the chemicals we were shown were clearly labeled and purposes indicated.
The letter says in another paragraph: the choice of the one awarded the tender (First Cleaning) was based on objective criteria including cleaning methodology, equipment and products to be used. In addition we considered some of their innovations like cleaning IT equipment with appropriate chemicals and installation of some machines especially in toilets which helps First Cleaning to monitor its employees on how many times they have cleaned the toilets (very sensitive ancillary), and the bidder provides best technology-based cleaning services in general.
Shelter raises a hue and cry
But the losing firm Shelter International launched an appeal, writing to CAA a letter it copied to the Independent Review Panel.
In the letter, which we have a copy of, Shelter International states its grievances with CAA's decision among which that they chose First Cleaning because in its bid it says it will use an innovative approach to its work.
The director of Shelter International Chris Besigye says, "The tender document did not mention that innovations will be used as a basis of evaluation and therefore we would like to know why this particular factor was used to disqualify us."
But who in his right mind would not want innovative people working for him, and why would that be grounds for protest, just because it is not mentioned in a document? CAA Director Masozera asked.
However that precisely is one of the two reasons, Ruganintwali told The Rwanda Focus, for which his panel deprived First Cleaning of its contract. He agrees with Shelter that it was wrong to qualify it since "innovation" was not mentioned anywhere in the bid documents.
"We have to go by what CAA said in its bid document and it did not specify innovation," Ruganintwali said.
We asked him whether it wouldn't be possible to cancel every tender in the country if it were a requirement that no sentence in a bid application should contain a word not specified in a bid document. He had no answer.
"In the few weeks we have worked with First Cleaning we are very happy with these people. Indeed they are innovative; they never need to be told anything twice; they are just what we need," Masozera told this newspaper.
But Masozera's hands are tied by the law and he has had to write First Cleaning to inform them their contract has been cancelled since the Independent Review Panel has now overturned CAA's decision and awarded Shelter International the tender.
The second reason Ruganintwali says his panel overturned CAA's choice is that Shelter's financial offer was Frw 4,850,000 (per month) as opposed to First Cleaning's 4,900,000. This is a difference of Frw 50,000 per month.
Masozera had this to say about the difference, "A price difference of fifty thousand francs could not on its own stop us from our objective as long as it was still within our budget limits."
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