No tendering for CEPEP

Some $44 million worth of CEPEP contracts were awarded without any public tendering.

This was revealed in the Senate yesterday when Leader of Opposition Business in the Senate, Wade Mark, posed to Minister of Public Utilities and the Environment, Rennie Dumas. Mark asked for a list of names of companies awarded CEPEP contracts, whether the companies were incorporated, and whether newspaper advertisements had been placed inviting public tendering for these public works?

In reply, Dumas said some 110 companies were doing CEPEP projects, and he distributed a list of the company names, number of employees and payments made to them from September 2002 to January 2003. He said all were duly incorporated under the New Companies Act. “No advertisements were placed in the daily newspapers for notice of public tendering for the public works under CEPEP since the programme is community-based and utilised established groups and organisations.” Mark pressed: “Could the Honourable Minister indicate to this house, how companies or groups or contractors are selected seeing that there is no public tendering? He talks about community groups. How is that conducted?”.

Dumas replied: “The question the member is asking was already asked and answered in this session...”. Mark hit back: “I asked a specific question and could he respond?”. Dumas replied that CEPEP work was allocated to community groups. “You said ‘community groups but how are they chosen?” Mark asked. Dumas replied: “There is a distinction between selection of a contractor and public works by a contractor and we have responded to both (questions)”. Mark insisted: “How do we select those contractors? Just give us an explanation”.

Dumas said: “The contractors were selected by a process of public advertisement, response to those advertisements, interviews of those contractors...That procedure was already outlined in a previous question”. After the debate Leader of Opposition Business Wade Mark told Newsday that the Opposition would call for a commission of Inquiry into CEPEP. “Tendering procedures should form part of the CEPEP programme and they should not simply give contracts to party hacks, friends and family, and then come to Parliament to insult the intelligence of the nation”.