Paria wins two of three challenges in security contract dispute

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

State-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Ltd has suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ed two out of three chal­lenges to the pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dure it fol­lowed for se­cu­ri­ty con­tracts for var­i­ous as­pects of its op­er­a­tions. 

De­liv­er­ing three de­ci­sions last Thurs­day, two pan­els ap­point­ed by the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion dis­missed two chal­lenges brought by Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Ltd on the ba­sis that there were no breach­es of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act.  

How­ev­er, a third pan­el found that Paria un­law­ful­ly ap­plied an undis­closed band­ing method­ol­o­gy when eval­u­at­ing the ten­ders it re­ceived for se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices for its ma­rine op­er­a­tions. 

De­spite the find­ing, the pan­el did not or­der a re-eval­u­a­tion as it not­ed that the pro­cure­ment process for that con­tract had been ter­mi­nat­ed be­fore the chal­lenge was de­ter­mined. 

It al­so de­clined to ap­point an in­de­pen­dent pro­bity ad­vi­sor to over­see fu­ture pro­cure­ment ex­er­cis­es that would be ini­ti­at­ed by Paria based on a lack of wrong­do­ing by the com­pa­ny. 

Stat­ing that the re­quest re­lat­ed to pro­cure­ment that does not yet ex­ist, the pan­el said: “The record dis­clos­es no fraud, bad faith or ma­nip­u­la­tion that might war­rant ex­tra­or­di­nary su­per­vi­so­ry in­ter­ven­tion.” 

Amal­ga­mat­ed filed the com­plaints af­ter Paria is­sued the ten­ders in Oc­to­ber last year and award­ed con­tracts for its re­fin­ery, “ter­mi­nalling fa­cil­i­ties” and ma­rine op­er­a­tions in mid-March. 

Amal­ga­mat­ed pur­sued the chal­lenges, ques­tion­ing the eval­u­a­tion pro­ce­dure ap­plied to the ten­ders. 

Re­spond­ing to the com­plaints, Paria’s lawyers, led by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, claimed that such were aca­d­e­m­ic, as Paria moved to ter­mi­nate the ten­der­ing process weeks af­ter the bid­ders were in­formed of their suc­cess or fail­ure. 

It al­so re­ject­ed Amal­ga­mat­ed’s claim over bid­ders not be­ing prop­er­ly in­formed of cri­te­ria and as­sess­ment pro­ce­dure for de­cid­ing the ten­ders. 

The pan­els found that they still had a du­ty to con­sid­er the chal­lenges de­spite the can­cel­la­tions. 

Af­ter con­sid­er­ing all the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed be­fore them, two pan­els dis­missed the com­plaints in re­la­tion to the ten­ders for the re­fin­ery and “ter­mi­nalling fa­cil­i­ties”. 

While they iden­ti­fied mi­nor er­rors, they stat­ed that such did not amount to a breach of the leg­is­la­tion. 

The pan­el, which par­tial­ly up­held the chal­lenge to the mar­itime ten­ders, or­dered Paria to pay one third of the $109,150 in le­gal costs in­curred by Amal­ga­mat­ed for that chal­lenge.