KUWAIT: MP Askar Al-Enezi yesterday sent a series of questions to Minister of Public Works Ali Al-Omair over the controversial KD 1.32 billion contract for the expansion project of Kuwait International Airport.

The lawmaker said that the ministry is insisting on signing the contract with the winner Kuwaiti-Turkish consortium despite key objections by the Audit Bureau and to do that it has sent the project to the council of ministers to take a decision on the issue.

The project was initially offered in a public tender and won by the Kuwaiti-Turkish consortium for about KD 1.38 billion, over KD 380 million above the ministry estimates.

Based on recommendations by the State Audit Bureau, the tender was canceled by the public works ministry and it was recommended that the winner consortium be disqualified because their offer is technically and financially defect, the lawmaker said.

It was again re-tendered but only among the four consortia who came first in the scrapped tender including the winners whom the Audit Bureau recommended to disqualify.

Estimates

The re-tendering was carried out after the ministry asked its advisers to restudy the cost estimates who accordingly increased the estimates from KD 1 billion to KD 1.25 billion, he said. This raise came although some key components of the project were cancelled.

The State Audit Bureau again rejected the contract because of suspected financial and technical violations in the tender, Enezi said. But the public works ministry finally took the issue to the cabinet to decide on it.

The lawmaker asked Omair if his ministry called for changing the Audit Bureau team that rejected the project twice. He said if the answer is positive, what is the legal justification for it and to where the request was submitted. He demanded official documents to support the answer.

He also asked if the ministry asked the cabinet to resolve the dispute and why it did so without resolving the technical and financial shortcomings demanded by the Audit Bureau.

Enezi said the main objection of the Audit Bureau was that its cost was highly inflated and should be lowered without impacting its components in addition to rectifying some technical issues.

He asked the minister why the ministry has failed to deal with such shortcomings.

By B Izzak