Procurement Board cancels Nkurenkuru Vocation Training Centre contract – Sends stern warning to bidders
The Central Procurement Board of Namibia (CPBN) has cancelled the procurement contract of the project ‘Construction of Nkurenkuru Vocational Training Centre (VTC) in Kavango West Region’ with Neu-Olulya Trading CC.
CPBN in a statement said the first monitoring and evaluation (M&E) visit to the project was conducted on 10 November 2020 and was followed by another visit in April 2021 and it was during these M&E site visits that they discovered that there was the poor or slow performance in the implementation of the project by the contractor.
“We found out that for a period of 6 months from October 2020 to March 2021, the contractor only managed to construct platforms for the administration, sewing, and culinary block, but the said platforms were not completely done as laboratory tests needed to be conducted before the final layers are constructed,” the procurement board said.
The board further explained that there were barely any materials on-site and the workers had to wait for nearly three months to get materials such as sand, cement, and stones to start casting the concrete manholes, plus there was a lack of manpower on-site as only thirteen employees were comprising of seven labourers, five plant operators, and one site agent.
“The majority of the plant equipment was not functional, there was no Security and Safety Officer on-site, despite these items being part of the preliminaries and generals,” added CPBN.
The CPBN said they also received documentary evidence from the National Training Authority indicating similar findings and to address the poor performance by the contractor, the Project Manager furnished the contractor with several notifications to raise concerns regarding the slow progress and poor performance.
“Furthermore, the contractor was given various opportunities to submit catch-up plans on how they would address the slow progress but still failed to implement their catch-up plants, therefore the lack of performance by the contractor was evidence of the expenditure of the project that was at 7.5% on 10 August 2021 whereas contract period and time had lapsed with 47% by then,” said CPBN
The Procurement Board said therefore as a result of the nonperformance on the construction of the project, in September last year resolved to cancel the contract with Neu-Olulya Trading CC in terms of clause 57 of the General Conditions of Contract (GCC).
“After the contract determination, Neu-Olulya Trading CC opted to go for adjudication process and the adjudicator ruled in favour of the Namibia Training Authority, the employer on 17 March 2022 and as a result construction on site has been halted since 30 September 2021,” added the Board.
The CPBN is remedying the situation and has opted to conduct an emergency procurement with restrictions on bidders who participated in the first bidding process to get a contractor on-site as soon as practically possible.
“This serves as a stern warning to bidders that CPBN will not tolerate non-performance on projects it has awarded,” they emphasised.
The procurement of the project was conducted by the CPBN on behalf of the Namibia Training Authority with the contract valued at N$ 35,561,061.67.
