Only one MCAST bidder was certified by national disability agency
Matthew Vella
Only one of the five companies in the MCAST contract debacle had been certified with premises that were fully accessible to disabled persons by the National Commission for Persons with Disability (KNPD).
The tender, an €1.8 million contract for the provision of IT diploma lessons to 600 MCAST students, demanded that the premises of the computer education centres should be accessible to the disable if they were to be eligible for the contract.
Computer Domain, the company which unsuccessfully appealed the decision to award the contract to all five bidders, was awarded KNPD certification after an inspection of their premises by commission officials.
Certification is awarded after the planning authority consults with the KNPD on applications for buildings open to the public, such as educational centres. The KNPD vets the building plans and gives its opinion, and once the building is finished MEPA asks the commission to inspect the place and certify it.
According to the KNPD, only Computer Domain’s premises was certified after an on-site inspection.
Two other companies – Key Services and St Martin’s College – had their plans vetted by the KNPD, which found them to be according to their access guidelines, but no inspection or certification was carried out for the buildings.
Swatar Training Centre, on the other hand, had its plans vetted by the KNPD, which however found them to be not in line with their guidelines.
The KNPD said it had no contact with another company, Future Focus.
Police charges
Both Future Focus and Key Services were charged in court for allegedly making false declarations in their tenders, over their buildings’ accessibility to disabled persons. The police investigation was launched after Labour MP Evarist Bartolo raised the matter.
But despite being charged in court, both Future Focus and Key services were still awarded part of the contract to provide the IT lessons.
MaltaToday can confirm that the Contracts Department had decided not to award the contract to the two companies, when it learnt of the police charges.
Future Focus and Key Services filed a court injunction against the Contracts Department’s decision not to award them the contract, which the director-general of contracts protested.
However, a finance ministry spokesperson told MaltaToday that the companies were allowed to retain their slice of the contract upon submitting a declaration to the Contracts Department, stating they had not made the false declarations they are being accused of.
“The company directors are still presumed innocent until they are found guilty,” the spokesperson said.
The finance ministry said the declaration submitted by the two companies could not be published because it is considered confidential in terms of the Public Contracts regulations.
Rosanne Galea, the director of Future Focus, had told MaltaToday that the MCAST tender’s clause on accessibility stated that premises had to be accessible to persons with disabilities, but that it did not mention standards to be used for accessibility or the type of disability referred to. “The tender did not request any supporting documentation in this regard,” Galea said.
In a press release after Computer Domain lost its appeal against the award of the contract, Future Focus maintained they were fully compliant with their declaration on accessibility for disabled students – going as far as asking Evarist Bartolo to tour the premises in a wheelchair and verify for himself the building’s accessibility.
Evarist Bartolo described the award of the contract to the two companies as “shameful and scandalous behaviour from a government that is encouraging disrespect of the law and abuse of rules which government should be safeguarding.”
The controversy
The contract for the teaching of the MCAST/BTEC first Diploma in IT became the source of controversy after Computer Domain appealed the decision by the Contracts Department to award the contract to all five tenderers.
At the hearing of the Public Contracts Appeals Board, it was revealed that MCAST’s adjudicating board had re-graded its marks, when only one company – Computer Domain – managed to receive the necessary 70 marks to be eligible for the contract.
It transpired that the Contracts Department disagreed with the adjudicating board’s conclusions, saying they “did not reflect the content of the tender specifications”.
The board decided to re-grade the bids, revising them upwards by as much as 27%, and recommend that all bids are accepted.
The director-general of contracts, Francis Attard, has categorically denied that he or the general contracts committee ever requested the panel to change the points.
The chairman of the board, Juan Borg Manduca – also the director of MCAST’s ICT institute – claimed he was “under the impression that the threshold was fixed at 50 points.”
The Public Contracts Appeals board said it couldn’t “but exclaim its amazement in this regard, questioning in the process, as to how could have the adjudication board worked on the assumption that the pass mark was at 50%... the PCAB cannot condone such unprofessional conduct…”
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