Gold: NMC in insurance tender mess

MBABANE – The National Maize Corporation (NMC) has been found to have clearly and intentionally misdirected itself, by ignoring its own tender document in order to cherry-pick Eswatini Insurance Brokers for insurance broker services tender.

NMC issued a tender to the public for insurance coverage to be provided for various categories of items they wish to be covered.

A number of companies including Ensure Brokers (Swaziland) (PTY) Ltd, Eswatini Insurance Brokers and others tendered for the provision of the services to NMC.

The tenders were evaluated and in terms of the assessment by NMC’s Tender Board, Eswatini Insurance Brokers was in their view, the most responsive tenderer.

NMC Tender Board was reportedly omitted in the calculation of the tender amount by the Eswatini Insurance Brokers for workmen’s compensation and by so doing, the price of the Eswatini Insurance Brokers became the most favourable and best price thus they were awarded the tender.

According to the Independent Review

Committee (IRC) ruling no explanation was given at the hearing for the clear and gross misdirection by not including the workmen’s compensation amount by the NMC in the computation of the amount to be insured.

“In that regard, we can only conclude that the Applicant (Ensure Brokers) was being excluded deliberately and that the second respondent (Eswatini Insurance Brokers) was being cherry-picked by the first respondent (NMC) which is unlawful,” read the IRC ruling in part.

Ensure Brokers (Swaziland) became aware of the intention to award and objected and followed the procedures in terms of the Act and Regulations whereupon the matter eventually came before the IRC. The matter was, therefore, taken to be properly before the IRC whereupon all declarations were made and there were no objections to any of the members who were presiding over the matter.

The case of the Ensure Brokers (Swaziland) simply put, was that the evaluation and tender were not evaluated correctly in that, the procuring entity did not correctly calculate the scores and the amount tendered by each party.

The scope of services which were out for tender included, assets all risks, multimark insurance, commercial crimes, motor insurance, workman’s compensation, plant all risk and machinery breakdown.

Ensure Brokers attended all the items above, and the Eswatini Insurance Brokers, likewise, tendered for all the items together with all the others. The evaluation scores reflected that the best responsive tenderer after the assessment was the Eswatini Insurance Brokers.

On careful consideration and looking at the amount tendered for each of the items by the procuring entities’ Tender Board, it was apparent that they omitted in the calculation of the tender amount by the Eswatini Insurance Brokers for workmen’s compensation. In omitting to include the same, the price of the Eswatini Insurance Brokers became the most favourable and best price thus they were awarded the tender. At the hearing of the appeal before the IRC, Ensure Brokers pointed out the anomaly, which was a grave anomaly in that Eswatini Insurance Brokers had not tended an amount for the workmen’s compensation which was a requirement. This amount is covered by one insurer Eswatini Royal Insurance Corporation (ERIC), which quoted all the tenderers the same amount.

The omission by the NMC to include the amounts computation of the scores led to the Eswatini Insurance Brokers being the successful tenderer.

Ensure Brokers, on the other hand, had included the amount for workmen’s compensation in their document and, therefore, on computation, they became the most responsive tender of all the parties.

During the hearing of the matter, the NMC considered that there was an error in the tender process and tendered that the entire tender process should start afresh and that all the parties will be reassessed after they had tendered. Ensure Brokers objected to the suggestion by the NMC clearly in view of the fact that an attempt was being made by the NMC to not uncover the gross regularity in the evaluation. The matter proceeded and on assessment by the IRC, the submissions of the Ensure Brokers regarding the valuation and the pricing structure were proved to be correct.

“NMC had clearly not assessed and evaluated for some reason, which is best known to them the correct scores and amounts which led to them awarding the Eswatini Insurance Brokers which was clearly an error,” read the riling of the IRC in part. While it may be commendable that the NMC acknowledged that there was an error in the evaluation, it is not acceptable that they would request that the tender process start afresh as evaluations are conducted thereafter.

What would have been expected was that they would concede that an error was made in the calculations by the Tender Board, to the extent that the best and valuated tenderer was that of the Ensure Brokers. The IRC raised concerns as to how the Tender Board could miss in their calculations the one standard amount for workmen’s compensation which was clearly quoted by all the parties as that being provided by ESRIC.

The amount was not different in quotation to each individual tenderer but was exactly the same amount. The IRC stated that the Tender Board should have asked itself how it came about that Eswatini Insurance Brokers did not tender for the workmen’s compensation which was included in the items to be tendered for.

The requirements further clearly state that the Ensure Brokers, were desirous to appoint an experienced insurance broker service provider to render insurance services to all NMC assets and workmen’s compensation for a period of five years, (clause 2.)

NMC was therefore found to have incorrectly and erroneously awarded the Eswatini Insurance Brokers the tender which was therefore set aside and it was ordered that the correct assessment, of the tender should have been Ensure Brokers.