News | Sunday, 15 February 2009

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Double salary for MCAST director in IT contract fiasco

Matthew Vella
The MCAST director who presided over a controversial tender for IT courses in 2008, and which led to a police investigation, is earning more than double the salary of his peers.
Juan Borg Manduca’s €66,491 salary was revealed by Education Minister Dolores Cristina, in response to a parliamentary question by Labour MP Evarist Bartolo.
At €28,301, the salary of the directors of MCAST’s other institutes earn is just 42% of Borg Manduca’s.
The other salaries are €81,528 for school principal Prof. Maurice Grech and chief executive Emanual Attard, and €26,787 for the institutes’ deputy directors. Borg Manduca, who is the director of the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology’s ICT institute, chaired the selection board that evaluated the tenderers for the €1.8 million contract to provide IT lessons for BTEC diplomas to some 600 MCAST students.
Borg Manduca is also a government-appointed director on the board of the Malta IT Training Services (MITTS).
The MCAST tender attracted controversy because the selection board changed its marks when it transpired that only one company out of five, Computer Domain, received the necessary 70 marks to be awarded the contract.
The Contracts Department told the board that their conclusions “did not reflect the content of the tender specifications”, which led the board to re-grade the bids, and recommend that all five bids are accepted.
In a hearing before the Public Contracts Appeals Board, Borg Manduca claimed he was “under the impression that the threshold was fixed at 50 points”, while appellants Computer Domain claimed the points were re-graded to ensure all the bidders became eligible for the contract.
The Public Contracts Appeals board expressed “amazement” as to how have the adjudication board had assumed the pass mark was at 50%, calling it “unprofessional conduct.”
It was also revealed that the grades were revised upwards by as much as 27%, with Borg Manduca revising his marks by 20%.
After a police investigation was requested by Labour education shadow minister Evarist Bartolo, two companies – Future Focus and Key Services – were charged in court on alleged false declarations in their tenders, over their buildings’ accessibility to disabled persons.
Despite being charged in court, both Future Focus and Key services were awarded part of the contract to provide the IT lessons. The Finance Ministry said it had accepted a declaration from the schools’ directors denying the charges made against them.
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.”

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