PPDA blocks recruitment of contractor for oil road
Ms Allen Kagina, the Uganda National Roads
KAMPALA- The procurement of consultancy services for supervision of the design and construction of one of the ‘oil roads’ should be halted, the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) has said.
PPDA says the procurement for the upgrading of the Buhimba-Nalweyo-Kakinda-Bulamagi, Bulamagi-Igayaza-Kakumiro road was irregular and unfair.
PPDA faults the Uganda National Roads Authority (Unra) for alleged irregularities in the handling of financial proposals of bidders.
“The Authority found the above four preliminary matters had an adverse impact on the procurement, which could not be cured by any corrective active save for the cancellation of the process,” PPDA said in a July 2018 administrative review report.
“In accordance with Section 91 (4), the entity is advised to cancel the procurement due to unfairness and lack of transparency exhibited during and after the re-evaluation,” the report adds.
Unra had in September last year initiated the procurement, attracting nine companies.
These were LEA Associates South Asia Pvt Limited in association with KOM Consult Limited, Wanjohi Mutonyi Consult Ltd in association with M&E Associates and AARVEE Associates in sub-consultancy with WINTA Consulting Partners (U) Ltd.
The bidders
The others were Professional Engineering Consultants (PEC), AECOM Uganda Ltd in association with ICS Ltd, AECO – Abuljedan Engineering Consulting Office in association with Technology Consultants Ltd and AIC Progetti SPA in association with Prome Consultants.
Kagga and Partners Consulting Engineers and Via International in association with Gensult (U) Ltd were the last bidder.
All the aforementioned companies in October submitted technical and financial proposals.
Unra’s November technical evaluation report ranked LEA number one after it scored 89.81 per cent, AECO was second with 82.71 per cent, Via came third (81.44 per cent) and PEC was fourth with 79.1 per cent.
To do the work, LEA had quoted Shs9.8 billion, AECO Shs10.8 billion whereas VIA asked for Shs15.2 billion.
In December, Unra wrote to the other companies that had scored below 80 per cent, stating the weaknesses of their proposals.
Consequently, PEC applied for administrative review of the process.
However, according to the PPDA report, Unra did not reply to PEC’s request within 15 working days, prompting the company to seek PPDA’s intervention.
