The government has been ordered to cancel a €7 million tender for the provision of meals to migrants in detention and open centres and to re-issue the call after inserting specific clauses making the offer much clearer.

The order to the Ministry for Home Affairs and National Security was given by the Public Contracts Review Board (PCRB), upholding an appeal by one of the potential bidders.

In its decision, the PCRB, chaired by Anthony Cassar, agreed that the tender was not in order, as it lacked specific information on how many meals were needed in certain situations, and which would have made the evaluation process subjective.

Also, the board declared it unacceptable that the tender did not require bidders to show their food preparation facilities to the evaluators before applying to participate in the €7 million tender.

Instead, the ministry has been ordered by the PCRB to “include a provision to the effect that a site visit of the premises where the food is to be processed, is to be carried out during the evaluation process”.

The decision will now send the Home Affairs Ministry tender back to the drawing board.

Following the publication of the multi-million tender last August, James Caterers, one of the leading ready-made meal suppliers on the island, cried foul over the “ambiguity” of the tender.

Seeking a remedy – a legal possibility during a tendering process – the company insisted that the wording of the tender was too vague and that potential bidders who did not have the necessary certification and standards were still allowed to participate as no site visit was to be carried out during the evaluation process.

While the tender specified that the winning tender had to supply some 120,000 meals a month for migrants hosted in Malta, it did not give any number to how many ‘emergency’ meals had to be supplied, despite the fact these could be thousands.

Also, the tender made it clear that no inspections to the food preparation premises were to be held during the evaluation processes.

Sources told Times of Malta that the way the tender had been published left many loopholes open to subjective interpretation to enable small caterers which were not up to standard but had political connections possibly benefit from such a lucrative deal. James Caterers, the appellants, also insisted that since the meals supplied to migrants hosted in Malta are usually Halal – the food consumed by many Muslims – this had to be included as a specific requirement.

However, the PCRB did not uphold this argument.

Migrants at various detention and open centres are offered free breakfast, lunch and dinner during their stay at the centres.