Call for inquiry into hospital tender award

Simed International, the Dutch company that was a strong contender for the Mater Dei Hospital's Lm25 million medical equipment contract, has called on the government to hold a public inquiry to investigate the "abusive way" in which the authorities have awarded the contract to the Italian firm INSO.

It claimed that a government statement on Monday was full of inaccuracies: "Such statements coming out of the government's information department are seriously worrying and provide grounds for a reasonable suspicion of a hidden agenda of somebody".

Simed said an appeals tribunal had disqualified INSO and Hospitalia when it annulled the decision by the director general of contracts to award the contract to INSO.

A day after the government said it was awarding the contract to INSO, Simed representatives said they were surprised by the latest decision of the Foundation for Medical Services and the director general of contracts to award the contract to INSO.

They denied the government's statement that INSO had the lowest bid. On the contrary, Simed argued that INSO had the highest bid and that this had been proven in the appeals' proceedings.

Simed representative Ferry Dubbers and legal advisor Joseph Fenech both insisted at a press conference yesterday there was never any clarification process with their own company - as recommended by the appeals tribunal last October.

Dr Fenech, a former Nationalist cabinet minister, said the hasty way in which the department of contracts recommended to the government to award the contract to INSO was "simply incredible".

He said the contract was characterised by abuse: "The first abuse was carried out by FMS when it decided to recommend that the contract should be awarded to Hospitalia - when it should have disqualified Hospitalia as was in fact done later by the public contracts appeals board.

"The second abuse was by the contracts committee when it awarded the contract to INSO despite having the most expensive bid, in terms of price, of the total cost of the equipment according to the definition of price as stated in the tender document and which amounted to €98 million."

Dr Fenech said that INSO had failed to include quotations for important items, such as the Gamma camera, which were mandatory: "These items were required by the tender document and companies which failed to quote for such important items should have been disqualified."

He added that according to the technical experts appointed by the authorities themselves, INSO's bid was "poor and technically inferior" and that it was only 53.72 per cent compliant with the tender requirements.

Dr Fenech insisted that INSO's total bid was €10 million higher than Simed's.

"The same technical experts had stated that Simed's offer was second best after that of Hospitalia and that Simed was 75.8 per cent complaint."

He denied that Simed had been given an opportunity to clarify the areas in which it was not in conformity with the tender document, as the government had said in its statement.

Dr Fenech said the clarification process with Simed never took place: "It is not true that Simed's offer had been re-evaluated and found to be technically inferior to that of INSO. There are serious doubts, according to information in our possession, as to whether the contracts committee met on December 26 after receiving the FMS report.

"This process of awarding this contract has taken over two years. However, last Friday the advisory board decided to make its recommendations... On the same evening, the FMS passed on the decision to the director general of contracts who spoke to the government, which decided to accept the recommendation to award the contract to INSO.

"On Friday evening, the department of contracts informed INSO of the decision. So what had not been possible to be decided in two years has been decided in one day. It seems that everyone was working 150 miles per hour last Friday to make sure that everything was concluded on that particular day."

Mr Dubbers said his company was extremely surprised with the latest developments.

He insisted that a clarification exercise never took place: "Despite several requests, FMS refused to be specific on what clarifications it needed but, instead, gave a very generic reply; that the clarifications requested were the issues raised in the expert's reports. In their letter dated December 26, however, FMS had no problem specifying the 17 areas that required clarifications.

"On November 18, Simed submitted clarifications for all outstanding matters in a comprehensive report with supporting documents that should not take more than a few days to evaluate. After submission of this report, FMS did not seek further clarifications."

The decision by the government to award the contract to INSO again was announced late last Monday.