One hundred and eighty-three companies have been pre-qualified by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) out of over 400 of them which submitted pre-qualification documents for the remediation of oil impacted sites in Ogoniland in Rivers State.
The Minister of State for Environment, Alhaji Ibrahim Usman Jibril, who made the disclosure in an interview with newsmen on the sidelines of a pre-contract award meeting with the companies in Port Harcourt last Tuesday said the 183 companies were currently at the stage of getting clarifications on the location sites they had visited as contained in their bid documents.
According to him, the companies have been pre-qualified and bid documents issued to them and in line with the Procurement Act, they are provided a platform where they can clarify issues with regards to sites visited.
Jibril said the companies at the meeting, were expected to respond or clarify issues which were not quite clear to them in the bid documents they submitted, hinting that it was against this backdrop that officials of the federal Ministry of Environment drawn from the Procurement, Technical and Legal Departments, including the Director of Operations as well as project management consultants were on ground to provide answers to the questions raised by the companies.
The Minister, who was represented by his Senior Technical Assistant, Dr. Ishayaku Mohammed said the submission of technical and financial bids by the companies which would hold on September 24,2018 would be the next step to ascertain whether or not the firms have both the technical and financial competence and expertise to handle the remediation project.
He disclosed that the technical evaluation of the companies would last for one week before the opening of the financial bid which would also last for another one week.
“The process like I mentioned are two. One, there will be a technical evaluation. We will ensure they submit technical bid. The technical bid will enable the technical team constituted to determine whether or not the companies have the technical competence and expertise to be able to engage in the remediation project. It is only when you have termed a company to be technically qualified that you now open the financial bid to see if it is responsive financially”, he said, pointing out that it is that process that would give the companies the stamp of approval to undertake the clean-up exercise in the long run.
The Minister further indicated that HYPREP would strictly adhere to the timelines of the remediation project, hinting that by the end of October this year, the remediation of impacted sites proper would commence.
He allayed fear that funding of the project would constitute a problem, confirming that $177 million earmarked for the clean-up exercise was already in the account of the Ogoni Trust Fund.
It would be recalled that HYPREP’s technical team had last week taken the pre-qualified companies to the impacted sites in Eleme Local Government Area and other locations in Ogoniland to delineate the areas.
Source: TheTide