Editorial | Saga of school buses

The Government hasn’t explained why it has shifted course and will now acquire new, rather than second hand buses, to complete the fleet for its rural schools’ transportation service.

Yet, the decision, recently disclosed by Daryl Vaz, the minister with responsibility for transportation, could be interpreted as the administration’s belated acceptance of the Public Procurement Commission’s (PPC) position of the inefficacy of the process used last year by Mr Vaz’s ministry to acquire 110 pre-owned American school buses for the service.

In a way, too, it could be read as a rebuke of sorts of the PPC for surrendering its ground, and folding, even though it remained unhappy with the sole bidder procurement methodology and an insufficiently rigorous technical and economic analysis of the 110 buses that were being bought, on which US$8.94 million was being spent.

Indeed, even as it gave its imprimatur to the purchase last June, on the basis that the rural schools transport system was a “priority programme for the Government”, the PPC told the transport ministry its future acquisitions should, “as far as practicable”, be based and competitive tender. If that can’t happen, it should underpin its action with robust data.

“Where (competitive bidding is) impracticable, a far more compelling justification must be offered, complete with credible data and information concerning the market for school buses,” the PPC said in its endorsement certificate, as was reported by this newspaper on Sunday.

Notwithstanding its conclusion that the school bus programme was a priority for the administration, the commission erred in its approach and potentially diminished its authority in how, in the end, it handled the matter. The Milverton Reynolds-chaired group could have withheld its imprimatur, leaving it to the Cabinet to exercise the constitutional and statutory powers to endorse the acquisition.

LESSON

So, there is a lesson in this for the commissioners should a similar situation arise in the future. After-the-fact I-told-you-so’s, they are reminded, may be self-gratifying, but they don’t often make for good public policy.

The Public Procurement Commission is a creature of the Public Procurement Act of 2015. Among its key functions is to vet, certify at varying classifications, and maintain a register of qualified suppliers of goods and services to Government and its entities. It also reviews and “approves or endorses” procurement contracts above Tier 1 level, or over J$60 million.

The planned acquisition of the distinctive, yellow American buses, which had previously been used in the US school system, broke into a campaign controversy ahead of last year’s election, when it emerged that a local firm, ELHYRDO Ltd, had won a contract, based on its unsolicited proposal, to import the buses for the Government.

What started as a dispute over the alleged opaqueness of the agreement and of ELHYDRO’s capacity to deliver, evolved into an all-out fight over the age (mileage) of the buses; the thoroughness of their mechanical assessment; their suitability for Jamaica’s terrain; the economics of their operation; and the quality of the competing public transportation policies of the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the opposition People’s National Party (PNP).

Policy competition apart, it turns out, based on the documents reported on by The Sunday Gleaner, that the PPC had similar concerns. In a series of back-and-forth between itself and the Ministry of Science, Energy, Technology and Transport (MSETT – as it then was), the commission pressed the ministry for “better and further particulars” on the technical and economic aspects of the proposed acquisition.

SYMPATHETIC

Any detailed and substantial reading of the documents can’t but be sympathetic to the PPC overall concerns and demands. Even non-technical, but sensible observers, are likely to be struck by the relative absence of detailed technical data, time series cost, income analyses, and potential savings, in the ministry’s responses. This information would have been expected at the start, not in the middle, of the exercise. And not when, or because, the Public Procurement Commission asked for it.

The time pressures felt by MSETT to acquire and test the buses by the beginning of the new school year in September – or ahead of any other event – was not the fault of the procurement regulations, as some might claim. All the issues raised by the PPC were relevant, and in keeping with the need to properly justify, as it pointed out, giving its stamp of approval to the spending of over J$1.4 billion of taxpayers’ money.

Since the MSETT can only be assumed to have acted in good faith and what it believed to be the best policy interest of Jamaicans, what might have been revealed in this back-and-forth is an insufficiency of high-level technical staff in the State bureaucracy (or at MSETT) to complete the kind of analyses, and at the quality, that was being insisted on.

If that is indeed the case, it is a matter to be addressed.

In the meantime, Mr. Vaz has reported he is now looking for new buses, and will tender internationally. He invoked the urgency of the situation in his expectation to accelerate the process.

The issue of the American buses highlights pit holes to be avoided – by himself and the PPC.