Kebs gets nod to award tender for imports inspection

High Court has cleared Kenya Bureau of Standards to proceed and award a multi-billion tender for the inspection of imported goods ahead of their entry to Kenya.

This follows the dismissal of a case filed by a company based in Turkey, TUV Austria Turk, which had challenged the process arguing that it was treated unfairly.

In the decision, Justice John Mativo said it was inconceivable how the company, which admitted having not complied with the bid terms would expect Public procurement Administrative Review Board, to allow its request.

“Allowing the request for review on the face of the glaring omission to provide tender security is an open invitation to the review board to throw out of the window the tenets of fairness provided under Article 227 by subjecting the applicant’s tender to different terms other than those in the bid documents thereby according it preferential treatment different from the one accorded to the other bidders,” the judge said.

The judge said despite conceding before the board that it did not provide the bid security, and aware that its request for review collapsed on this ground, the company carefully crafted other grounds of attack.

“The applicant collected the bid documents and admitted that it did not provide security at the evaluation stage. To argue otherwise or to purport to shift the blame to the board as has happened in this case is to me the height of dishonesty,” the Judge said.

Last December, Kebs sought to have more inspector firms on board to inspect goods before leaving the export country. It floated the tender for enlargement of provision of Pre–export Verification of Conformity (PVoC) to standards service.

Kebs sought to have more firms to ensure that products being imported into the country are verified before they are imported.

The tender attracted three bidders — Premier Verification Quality Services Dubai, TUV Austria Turk and TUV Rheinland. TUV Austria was notified on January 13, that its tender was substantially non-responsive.

The firm accused Kebs of failing to notify them of all the addenda but the case was dismissed by the board.