The tender for supply with masks and disinfectants, even though it was cancelled twice before, the Municipality of Viti awarded through negotiated procedure. The tender has been given to the company Krasniqi LLC which has not been an offeror in the two previous announcements. The Municipality of Viti does not have an explanation how the tender was given to the respective company besides the notification for signing of the contract.

Beadin Syla

In October last year, the Municipality of Viti was seeking to acquire masks and disinfectants to help contain the spread of COVID-19. To this end, the Municipal Procurement Office announced a tender for the supply of such products on October 20, 2020.

However, there were no bids submitted by any economic operator on this open tender, compelling the Tender Evaluation Committee to recommend its cancellation.

The Municipality used the same criteria in both the first and second announcement of the tender for the supply of masks and disinfectants. Like the first time, the Municipality proceeded to cancel the tender for the supply of masks and disinfectants in the second invitation to tender too. The cancellation of this procurement activity for the second time compelled the Procurement Office to initiate the procedures to award the tender through negotiated procedure. Quickly, the Municipality invited only one economic operator, Krasniqi LLC, to negotiate the tender, ultimately signing a contract with this operator. However, in the Notice of Award through Negotiated Procedure for this tender, the Municipality of Viti failed to publish the tender dossier on e-Procurement.

The contract between the Municipality and the economic operator Krasniqi LLC is not available, and neither are the criteria used for the award of this tender, nor the prices paid for one box of three-layer masks and one 500ml bottle of disinfectant.

Both with the first and the second tender announcement, under the criteria for economic operators, the Municipality of Viti had listed requirements for international quality certificates, equipment testing certificates, ISO 14001:2015, ISO 9001:2015, OHSAS 18001:2007 certifications. Further, it required the number of people working for the company to be 10 persons, and a risk assessment for 10 job positions concerning the safety and health at work should be conducted by a company which is licensed to carry out such task by the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare. Also, the Municipality of Viti has requested additional certificated to be submitted by the company such as business certification, on VAT and other certificates.

However, public procurement specialist Isuf Zejna found that the criteria set by the Municipality of Viti are exceptionally high and completely unreasonable in some points.

According to Isuf Zejna, “in such a supply contract, the requirement for the number of employees is unnecessary, because all the municipality needs is the delivery of products, and this can be done with one employee if necessary. On the other hand, many ISO certificates have been listed as required, and the question arises as to why does the municipality need such certificates and what assurances are attached that the products will have better quality than those that do not meet this standard? Another standard listed as required is OHSAS 18001. This standard no longer exists and has been replaced with ISO 45001, which shows that the Municipality lacks knowledge to draft such technical specifications.”

Even the risk assessment of labor positions, according to Isuf Zejna is completely unnecessary, as the company is not involved in production.

“The same principle applies to the risk assessment of labor positions. “This requirement would be reasonable if the company was involved in production or manufacturing and the jobs include tasks which may be hazardous, but in this case, it is completely unreasonable and unnecessary to require such an assessment,” noted Zejna.

Immediately after the cancellation of the tender announcement for the first time, the Municipality of Viti had announced a new tender for the supply of masks and disinfectants, with the same monetary amount of EUR 62,700.

In this tender process, the Municipality of Viti had received three bids. In the competition for the award were “Bodrumi i Vjetër” LLC, “Group of Operators” Samire Osmani IB, H.Seferi LLC and Group of Economic Operators TC Agimi-De and SOTE Made-Kos.

After the bid’s review by the relevant committee, on November 20, 2020, the Municipality of Viti announced the tender award to the Group of Economic Operators TE Agimi-De and SOTE Made-Kos. Their bid to carry out this supply was EUR 55,376.

However, only five days later, after the complaint lodged by one of the economic operators in the competition, the name of the operator which complained is not made known by the Municipality, the tendering procedure was cancelled. It was cancelled by the Evaluation Committee established by the Municipality which requested the cancellation of this tender and the declaration of all economic operators as unresponsive.

Excuses of the Municipality

The Municipality of Viti shares on why they canceled the tender for the supply of masks and disinfectant twice, even though in the second go it had announced a winner.

“On the first invitation, announced on November 2, 2020, we received a complaint and pursuant to the complaint we suspended the activity, until it was reviewed, proceeding with the activity, and forwarding it to the platform, where it was not extended at all, and we had to cancel the procedure.” Reasoning for the cancellation: “We did not receive any bid, afterwards we made the correction of the criteria and extended the submission deadline, which did not appear in the e-Procurement system,” states the response from the Procurement Office of the Municipality of Viti.

However, the Procurement Office did not explain what changes were made. In the request to clarify what changes were made, the Information Office of the Municipality of Viti said that they cannot provide any answer, as the Procurement Officer is in custody. However, from what was published on e-Procurement, it can be seen that the tender criteria are the same.

Both in the open and in the negotiated procedure tender, the Municipality had requested 557 packages with three-layer masks; 8400 units of 0.5-liter disinfectant; 400 units of liquid hand sanitizer, 5-liter container; 452 units of plastic hand sanitizer dispensers, capacity 1000 milliliters; 82 units of foot-operated disinfectant dispensers, capacity 1000 milliliters; 39 units of arm-boom dispensers, capacity 16 liters; and 335 facility disinfectants. The Procurement Office explains that the second time they announced the award after receiving three bids from three operators, where one was declared unresponsive, while the other had bid at a higher price.  However, the Procurement Office of the Municipality of Viti explains that after the complaint by one of the operators and document evaluation, the awardee was declared unresponsive as well.

“On the second invitation, announced on December 2, 2020, we received three bids, announced the award to the Group of Economic Operators, TE Agimi-De and SOTE Made-Kos, while the other two bids were unresponsive. One EO filed a complaint and upon clarification and requesting documents for verification, even the EO recommended for contract award turned out to be unresponsive,” explains the Procurement Office.

The Procurement Office of the Municipality of Viti has not been transparent regarding this tender. This is because it failed to publish most of its decisions on e-Procurement. Further, it failed to publish, on both e-Procurement and municipal website, the complaint of the operator on the award of tender for supply of masks and disinfectant to TE Agimi-De and SOTE Made-Kos. Failure to publish such documents raises the suspicion that there may not have been a complaint at all. According to Procurement Office, the Law on Public Procurement allows to award or recommend award to a single responsive economic operator.

After failing for a second time to announce the award to an economic operator through open procedure, the Municipality of Viti decided to award this tender through negotiated procedure, where the estimate was reduced, from EUR 62,700 to EUR 56,000.

The contract in the amount of EUR 55,963, or only EUR 37 less than the estimate, was awarded to Krasniqi LLC, based in Pristina. The Procurement Office explains why it decided to award the tender through negotiated procedure.

“Due to the urgency of requests and needs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the conclusion of a contract at an optimal time in the third case, we were compelled to use the negotiated procedure without publication of a contract notice,” states the response from the Viti Procurement Office.

However, the Municipality of Viti did not provide any information why only one economic operator was invited to negotiate the tender for the supply of masks and disinfectant and whether the criteria had been softened to award the contract to Krasniqi LLC, on grounds that the Chief Procurement Officer is in custody and there is no one to respond.

“As you have been informed, the Public Procurement Office in Viti is operating without a procurement manager for causes already covered in the media. Since we are yet to receive anything in writing on who will exercise this responsibility, I do not have an address to deliver your questions to the competent person,” states the response by the Information Officer, Mustafë Mehmeti.

For purposes of ensuring transparency and receiving even cheaper bids, the Municipality of Viti should have invited more than one economic operator to negotiate the tender for the supply of masks and disinfectant.

Inviting only one bidder leaves room for doubts of abuse in this tender, because if more operators were invited to bid, it could have awarded the tender at an even cheaper price.

Moreover, the awardee, economic operator Krasniqi LLC, had not bid at all in the two open tender processes that the Municipality of Viti conducted before awarding this tender through negotiated procedure.

An interesting fact is that the Municipality of Viti failed to invite the economic operators who bid in the first two invitations. It didn’t even invite the consortium that got the award for this tender, TE Agimi-De and SOTE Made-Kos.

How much did Municipality of Klina pay for sanitizer v. Municipality of Viti?

The Municipality of Viti paid EUR 2.57 per 500-milliliter container of sanitizer. However, some other municipalities paid less for the same product. The Municipality of Klina, according to the contract published on E-Procurement, paid EUR 2.15 per 500 milliliter containers of sanitizer. This means that the Municipality of Viti paid EUR 0.42 more per 500-milliliter container of sanitizer. The Municipality of Viti through this tender bought 8,400 units of disinfectants and paid 0.42 euro for each unit, more than the Municipality of Klina. If multiplying the number of units with the difference in price (such as 8,400 x 0.42 euro), it comes out that the Municipality of Viti has paid 3,528 euro more compared to the Municipality of Klina.

Awardee in second invitation to tender explains how the cancellation happened

Although it got the award and only six days later the tender award was canceled, the winning consortium did not file any complaint with the Procurement Review Body (PRB).

According to the decision of the contracting authority, certain high-quality certificates, based on certain standards, had been the reason for the cancellation of the signing of the contract between the Municipality of Viti and the consortium TE Agimi-De and SOTE Made-Kos, for the supply of masks and disinfectant.

In a response from the pharmaceutical company, Made-Kos, which was part of the consortium that participated in the tender of the Municipality of Viti, they said that after a complaint made by one of the companies participating in the tender, the contracting authority, in this case the Municipality of Viti, canceled this tender in full. “We were declared the winner as a group of economic operators, and we were a member of the consortium only and not a leader. During the re-evaluation stage, the contracting authority eliminated our group as a tenderer for reasons according to the Notice of CA Decision, which you can find on e-Procurement,” states the response by this company.

This consortium had bid a total price of EUR 55 thousand. However, Made-Kos failed to indicate how much was the bid per package of masks and per container of disinfectant, according to the request from the Municipality of Viti, required in the tender.

To see how much was paid per package of three-layer masks and per container of disinfectant with the specifications required by the Municipality of Viti, on June 24, 2021, we made a request for access to public documents, but there was no response returned regarding the contract signed between the Municipality and Krasniqi LLC.

Beadin Syla is a journalist with 12 years of working experience in the Kosovo media. Mr. Syla has worked for written media, initially for newspaper Lajm, then Infopress and then Zëri. In 2013, Mr. Syla moved to news agency KosovaPress. Also, Mr. Syla has been working for online media such as Insajderi and FaktePlus. Mr. Syla has written for the following sectors such as politics, economics, public procurement, and time after time security sector as requested by the redactors.

Disclaimer:

This publication was produced under the “Contribute to exposing flaws in institutional efforts to fighting COVID-19 pandemic through new legislation pieces and public contracts” funded by the European Union and implemented by Democracy Plus (D+). Its contents are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of D+ or the European Union.