By Balford Henry, Acting News EditorTHE CONTROVERSIAL award of a contract by the Correctional Services to a company headed by a former People's National Party candidate to provide meals for prisoners, has resurfaced in the Contractor General's latest report.
In the report tabled on Wednesday in the House of Representatives, Contractor-General Derrick McKoy concluded that the contract could not be considered "to have been awarded on merit".
"Neither can one conclude that there was impartiality, because we did not have the opportunity to review the proposal submitted by Cara Caterers Service Ltd.," Mr. McKoy said.
He said that Cara Caterers' proposal was missing from the official files of the Correctional Services when they were examined by his investigators, "and although a request was made by letter to the managing director of Cara it was not forthcoming." Only a portion of the proposal from its only competitor, Industrial Caterers, could be found in the Correctional Services files although a complete proposal had been submitted.
The principal director of Cara Caterers Services Ltd., of Dunrobin Avenue, Kingston 10, is Louis A. "Tony" Phillips, who represented the PNP in the General Election in 1976 in St. Andrew North Central.
Both Derrick Smith, Jamaica Labour Party spokesman on National Security, and Lambert Brown, University and Allied Workers Union vice president, raised concerns in 2000 when the contract was awarded to Cara. The UAWU represents rank and file correctional officers at the prisons.
Mr. Smith noted that six months after the award, "not one single plate of food was provided." He also criticised the Correctional Services for advancing Cara millions of dollars in mobilisation funds prior to the start of the contract.
Mr. Brown said that there was no "transparency" in the deal and that he regarded it as "scandalous."
In answering questions raised in the House of Representatives then by Mr. Smith, K.D. Knight who was then Minister of National Security, confirmed that Cara was advanced $14 million in mobilisation funds and that the total cost of the contract was $175.5 million over three years.
But, in his report the Contractor General said the value of the contract was "over and above what can be approved by any department or ministry and should have gone to the Government Contracts Committee for review and subsequently to Cabinet for approval before being awarded."
The contract was awarded by a committee set up by Lt. Col. John Prescod, former Commissioner of Corrections, and headed by Aeon Miller, executive director, community/juvenile section of the Correctional Services.
The Contractor-General said that on the matter of mobilisation, the Attorney-General's Department should have instructed the Commissioner to have included in the contract that a bank guarantee would have been required prior to the advance payment.
He said the Ministry of National Security distorted the process of procurement "when they allowed the Correctional Services Department to award the mobilisation (advance) payment."
Industrial Caterers, Cara's competitor for the contract, had been operating since 1994, supplying meals to seven major institutions across the island. Cara's Articles of Association and Memorandum of Association are dated March 24, 1999, 15 days after it was notified that it had been granted the contract.
Its certificate of incorporation was signed on April 14, 1999, 42 days before the contract was signed. It received its Tax Registration Number on May 27, 1999.
Based on a National Security and Justice Ministry submission in January, 2000, Cabinet approved the contract for the period January 4, 200 to December 31, 2002.
But Mr. McKoy said that while the Cabinet submission stated that the award was made on the basis of competitive prices, variety of menu and experience in catering, there was no evidence that variety in meals or experience in catering was considered.
