20 September 2004
By Hilath Rasheed, Evening Weekly Maldives
Last week’s meeting by the Tourism
Ministry to clarify its bid evaluation
process to the press and bidders for Vilivaru
and Biyaadhoo resorts was a landmark meeting.
Such meetings, and not just by the tourism
ministry but by any government authority,
would help to keep matters relating to
tender transparent. In fact, in this present
case, the President’s Office had
specifically asked the tourism ministry
to keep the bid evaluation process as transparent
as possible in order to ensure that the
outcome would be fair and free from bias.
|
|
Vilivaru Island Resort Maldives received
21 bids |
While the bid evaluation committee seemed
to have conducted the evaluation process
painstakingly over a period of 28 days,
some bidders, who failed to win the resorts,
pointed out that there were discrepancies,
and the bid evaluation committee admitted
that some mistakes had been done on their
part. This includes disqualification of
bids (from going into detailed evaluation)
for material deviation and for not meeting
requirements that were not specifically
required as part of the bid requirements.
Some bidders were also unhappy when a
tourism ministry official at the meeting
said that clarifications given to bidders
at the pre-bid meeting were not taken into
account during bid evaluation.
“Any information given at the pre-bid
meeting should conform, not contradict,
the process of bid evaluation,” a
bidder commented.
The tourism ministry had said that it
would send a “minutes of the pre-bid
meeting” to the bid evaluation committee,
but the bid evaluation committee said that
it did not receive this information.
The meeting which started at 12:00pm last
Tuesday, ended at around 4:00pm that day,
with a half hour break in between the meeting
with the bidders of Vilivaru and bidders
of Biyaadhoo. At the end of a long day,
a lot of questions remained unanswered.
There is the matter of who leaked information
about the two successful bidders on the
Internet well before the tourism ministry
made the official announcement. The bid
evaluation committee said that it was not
possible that the information would have
leaked from the committee itself.
Some bidders also claimed to The Evening
Weekly that some members of the bid evaluation
committee and some members of the tourism
ministry had directly or indirectly contributed
to the making of certain bids. The Evening
Weekly has been in contact with the tourism
ministry to get some answers for these
questions, but at the time of press, there
was no response from the ministry. We will
publish the tourism ministry’s responses
in our next issue if the ministry responds
to the questions forwarded by The Evening
Weekly.
Some bidders at the meeting said that
they would like to meet the bid evaluation
committee again for detailed explanation
of why their bids failed. Other bidders
said that they would like the tourism ministry
to go for a re-evaluation of the bids.
Still others said that, since they deemed
that their bids were unfairly disqualified,
they would opt for a court settlement.
“Surely, everyone will agree that
the bid evaluation process was carried
out thoroughly and professionally. I do
not think the court would find any substantial
reason to look into a case should a bidder
go to the court,” a member of the
bid evaluation committee told The Evening
Weekly.
The tourism ministry’s deputy director
Ismail Firaq said that any bidder who is
unsatisfied can lodge its complaint at
the ministry within a two-week period,
and that the ministry will then look into
their case.
Firaq also stood by the bid evaluation
committee and said that he had full confidence
in the committee and that he was of the
view that the committee had conducted the
bid evaluation process fairly and without
bias.
The meeting seems to have come a little
too late; for one thing, the tourism ministry
has already announced that Athama Ibrahim
Abdul Latheef had won Vilivaru while Sunland
Hotels Pvt Ltd had won Biyaadhoo and that
these successful parties will be handed
over the resorts shortly. Perhaps, the
tourism ministry should have first met
the bidders to listen to any grievances
and checked for any discrepancies in the
bid evaluation process before awarding
the resorts.
An official from Sunland, the winner of
Biyaadhoo, said that if the ministry wants
to go for a re-evaluation, it should re-evaluate
all the bids, and not just the bids of
certain parties.
Then there was the issue of why newcomers
to the industry were sidelined from winning
the resorts. The government had recently
said that it would welcome newcomers into
the tourism industry to ensure that the
wealth generated from tourism was more
equally distributed. The bid evaluation
committee said that the tourism ministry
had told the committee that this policy
of the government would have been reflected
in the bid evaluation process. Asked by
The Evening Weekly to specify what process
in the bid evaluation would have given
newcomers an advantage position, the committee
said that the fact that a performance security
was not required this time would mean that
any newcomer could have easily bid for
the two resorts. However, this means that
a newcomer’s only advantage was that
it could now only bid for a resort; there
was no guarantee that the newcomer would
have an advantage by being a newcomer though
the government said that it prefers newcomers
to the industry.
While it would be unfair to prevent established
parties from winning resorts, it is important
that, in order not to create “monopolies” in
the tourism industry, newcomers be given
a chance as well.
A person at the meeting held at Nasandhura
Palace Hotel commented that there was no
way to find out which was a new party and
which was an established party. If the
government can check the background of
people who apply for flats at Hulhumale,
whether they have their own homes, it should
not be difficult for the government to
run a background check on which parties
do not presently own any resorts.
|
