Amalgamated loses interim relief bid over EMBD security deal

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny has lost its bid to sus­pend a lu­cra­tive con­tract award­ed to one of its ri­vals by the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD). 

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion last week, a pan­el ap­point­ed by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) re­fused the in­ter­im re­lief sought by Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of its chal­lenge over the pro­cure­ment process used to award the con­tract to SWAT Es­tate Po­lice Com­pa­ny Ltd. 

The pan­el, chaired by Sparkle Kirk Sel­man, found that the sus­pen­sion would in­ter­rupt es­sen­tial se­cu­ri­ty cov­er­age for EM­BD. 

It al­so stat­ed the Amal­ga­mat­ed would suf­fer lit­tle prej­u­dice as their sub­stan­tive chal­lenge could be de­ter­mined rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly. 

Be­tween 2012 and 2026, Amal­ga­mat­ed per­formed se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices for the cen­tral zone of the State com­pa­ny, which man­ages land for­mer­ly held by Ca­roni (1975) Ltd. 

The com­pa­ny had a three-year con­tract be­tween 2012 and 2015 but con­tin­ued to pro­vide its ser­vices on a month-to-month ba­sis af­ter it end­ed un­til be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed last month. 

The an­nu­al cost of the con­tract was $1.55 mil­lion. 

The com­pa­ny claimed that when its ser­vices end­ed on June 30, SWAT’s of­fi­cers im­me­di­ate­ly com­menced du­ty. 

It filed a chal­lenge be­fore the OPR rais­ing sev­er­al is­sues and in­con­sis­ten­cies with the pro­cure­ment process em­ployed by EM­BD to re­tain SWAT. 

The com­pa­ny claimed that EM­BD failed to fol­low the open bid­ding pro­vi­sions un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Prop­er­ty Act 2015. It al­so claimed that it was un­law­ful­ly ex­clud­ed from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the process and that the EM­BD did not prop­er­ly an­nounce that it had se­lect­ed SWAT. 

In de­fence of the chal­lenge, EM­BD, through its lawyers led by Anand Ram­lo­gan of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, claimed that it ter­mi­nat­ed its se­cu­ri­ty con­tracts for all its re­gions af­ter dis­cov­er­ing per­for­mance is­sues and al­leged breach­es of con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions. 

It claimed that it utilised se­lec­tive ten­der­ing and in­ter­im emer­gency pro­cure­ment arrange­ments to main­tain un­in­ter­rupt­ed se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices at fa­cil­i­ties and lo­ca­tions un­der its con­trol. 

It al­so sug­gest­ed that an open ten­der process would not have been prac­ti­cal due to the time re­quired for such and the crit­i­cal na­ture of the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices re­quired.

It al­so point­ed out that the con­tract award­ed to SWAT was for un­der $1 mil­lion and fell un­der sim­pli­fied pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions. 

In de­ter­min­ing whether to sus­pend the con­tract, the pan­el agreed that Amal­ga­mat­ed had raised se­ri­ous is­sues to be con­sid­ered by it.