And going back briefly to the issue of the 8 million dollar Faber's Road contract. The Prime Minister and the Ministry of Works Engineer went to lengths yesterday to illustrate that the road works and related drainage and canals are worth all those millions.
But what about not putting it out to open tender? Instead they sued the selective Tendering process. The leader of the opposition has written to the PM saying that the Finance and Reform audit act require it to be put to open tender. Here's how the Prime Minster addressed that yesterday:..
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow - Prime Minister
"Now, those of you who say even in getting approval or forget the getting of approval - that no matter what, you should have taken this to the open tender procedure. When we check with the engineers, the open tender procedure takes between 90 and 130 days. If we had gone to do that we would have undercut the very argument we were making that we need to proceed on the basis of urgency."
"I could see the people say you will finish phase one in 6 months. So the open tender procedure will, might as well wait the 2 months and we follow then the rules and you do phase 3 and Faber's Road when it is schedule to be done. So I don't see how anybody can quarrel with the fact that because this was, is a matter of urgency we proceeded by way of the shortest possible route which is the limited tender procedure."
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