Reform Tenders to End Percentage-Seeking

editorial:

The Chief Minister has spoken out strongly against the obduracy of middlemen, those scavengers who swoop down on every contract awarded for public works and who pocket “percentages” in the name of party and government. The CM has called on everyone engaged in contract works to stop entertaining these bottom-feeders and has highlighted that cutting off this parasite that has attached itself to ‘development’ in Sikkim will ensure that the earmarked funds are spent better. There can be no argument against this call because there is no denying that anyone who leverages position and power [or proximity to them] to steal from public funds should receive police action and not bundles of cash. The damage this section wreaks is even more worrisome because they, because they obviously carry some influence, also compromise all projects and schemes by helping get undeserving bills processed and passed, as the CM himself noticed to be the case with some rural infrastructure projects in West Sikkim. The recent move of the State Government to award more and works to cooperative societies should help in stemming this malaise to some extent and can be doubly assured if the supervising government agencies monitor the works more closely and release payments only after confirming that quality work has been delivered. This monitoring will fix accountability at all levels and when compromises are discovered, will expose culpability in clearer detail. This will obviously require both, strong political will and judicious administrative commitment.

If the government is indeed serious about ending the bane of ‘percentage-seeking’ which hounds every work in the State, it will have to clean up the tendering process because it is at this very initial stage itself that selfish profiteering bites into public funds. The latest CAG Report for Sikkim, in its appraisal of the Roads & Bridges Department, has made a disturbing observation on what it calls the “cartelization of the tenders”. This Department, despite its inventory of 18,591 [that’s one contractor for every 26 citizens, by the way], consistently received bare minimum [as required by law] participation for 90% of the works it invited tenders for between 2005 to 2010. This record makes it clear that several of the ‘contractors’ got themselves registered only to pocket ‘pack-money’ from the actual workers and with their connivance to make the bidding process anything but fair, make the State spend much more than was required for every work. Where bidding is expected to have contractors offer to complete works at lowest prices, it is obvious that the rigging has ensured that works are consistently awarded at much higher costs than originally valued, because the lowest bidders are conveniently still much higher than the projected cost. This cartelisation has often also digressed to criminal attempts to deny prospective bidders from participating in the tendering process and it is in these murky waters that the “percentage-seekers” feed. Clear the pool and even the percentage-seekers will swim away and a much bigger victory would have been secured for the people and the State exchequer who will finally get to choose from genuine bids and not rigged submissions.