Further delays in Sugathadasa track relaying
A major delay in awarding the tender to relay the 400m and 200m synthetic tracks at the Sugathadasa Sports Complex has put national athletes in a fix ahead of two major international meets, the Asian Championships and the World Championships, the Sunday Times learns.
Sports Minister Dayasiri Jayasekera says the process will take at least two more months to complete contrary what the Sports Ministry Secretary Dr. D.M.R.B. Dissanayake said in early May. The secretary said the tender would be awarded within the next two weeks as the Cabinet Appointed Procurement Committee (CAPC) was looking into the grievances of both bidders.
“Hopefully we should be able to finalize it by August,” Minister Jayasekera told the Sunday Times. “It’s unfortunate that the process is taking this long but it’s beyond our control. We were hoping to complete it by early this year so that athletes have sufficient time to train for the Asian Championships. Unfortunately the tender process is taking too long.
Therefore Sports Ministry decided to send the Asian Champions squad for training in India.
Only three bidders have submitted technical proposals when the closing date ended on April 4, 2017, but the proposal of CML Edwards, a joint venture with Beyno has been rejected as they did not fulfil the tender requirement of having experience in laying five Full PUR tracks.
Accordingly, Access International, a joint venture with Conica and Sierra Construction–a joint venture with Polytan Asia are running for the million-rupee contract.
Following the recommendations of the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC), there have been complaints from both parties against each other.
“So we were compelled to seek the advice of the Attorney Generals’ Department in this regard,’ Minister said.
However, whoever gets the tender, there’s a strong tendency of either party seeking the intervention of the Procurement Appeal Board (PAB), as they did at the previous occasion. This will further delay the relaying of the track.
“This is the problem we are facing now and if worse come to worse, I will seek cabinet approval to do this without a tender process,” he added.
When the tender was first floated, CAPC awarded the tender to Access Internationals for a sum of Rs. 367,844,200.00 but an appeal by Sierra saw, PAB recommending a cancellation of the tender citing ‘The bid of the recommended bidder is not a legally valid bid’.
The bid document then required the fulfillment of strict conditions to qualify, including prior experiencing in laying at least one Class I track and five Class II tracks in South Asia. Critics argue that these have been introduced based on the experience of the ‘favoured’ bidder.
There were also allegations about the tender specification in the current tender as stringent technical specifications kept a number of possible bidders away from submitting technical bids.
The bid document required the fulfillment of strict conditions to qualify, including prior experiencing in installing a minimum of five IAAF Class I Full PUR tracks.
“Synthetic Track Manufacture with experience in installing minimum of Five (5) IAAF Class 1 Full PUR track,” the document stated.
Sugathadasa track, which is currently in a dilapidated state, was laid in 2012 ahead of the Asian Junior Athletics Championships in Colombo at a cost of Rs. 113 million. However, the track showed signs of physical damage less than 12 months into completion as low quality raw materials had been used by the contractor.