Auditor General Sue Winspear is reviewing government’s procurement procedures for the purchase of lateral flow tests through contracts with Blue Water Medical Supplies and Crown Agents following a short-lived legal challenge over the issue last year.
Governor Martyn Roper, who chairs Cabinet, told the Cayman Compass in a statement Tuesday the review was initiated at the request of Cabinet.
“Cayman has strong procurement laws and practices in place. As part of continuous improvement, Cabinet requested a report from the Auditor-General to see whether there were any lessons to be learned from this procurement around speed, efficiency and good governance,” he said in his emailed statement.
A draft of the review, the Compass was told, has been submitted by Winspear for fact-checking before the final report is completed. It is unclear if the final report will be released to the public.
The review follows legal action taken by Blue Water after the local company’s contract was initially pulled and a similar contract issued to Crown Agents, the UK supplier that has been delivering free vaccines to the Cayman Islands since last January.
Roper, in his statement, pointed out that lateral flow tests have played a significant role in protecting the Cayman population from COVID.
“The procurement of a large volume of lateral flow tests was an urgent requirement at a challenging moment in our response to this global pandemic, especially to ensure we could keep disruption in schools to a minimum and to reduce risks from incoming travellers,” he said.
Contract confusion
The procurement of the lateral flow tests made its way into the public domain when Blue Water, a Cayman-owned company, filed a writ in the Grand Court in November.
In that writ, Blue Water alleged government had pulled out of a contract to buy 500,000 COVID-19 Flowflex Rapid Antigen Tests at a total cost of $1.275 million.
The agreement, signed through the Ministry of Health and Wellness, was confirmed in a government-issued purchase order on 27 Oct., it was alleged in court documents.
Subsequent to issuing of that order, summary notes from a Cabinet meeting, held on 2 Nov., indicate that government decided instead to purchase 1 million lateral flow tests from Crown Agents for $3 million.
No mention of Blue Water Medical or any earlier contract had been made in the Cabinet notes.
Following the filing of the writ, Finance Minister Chris Saunders, who pulled the plug on the purchase, told the Cayman Compass he was uncomfortable releasing funds for the original contract based on the details he was given.
The legal challenge was later dropped after government reversed its position and agreed to honour the original purchase order for 500,000 lateral flow test kits from Blue Water.
It is not clear if the second order with Crown Agents, for 1 million LFTs, was completed.
Use of the COVID-19 lateral flow tests – which provide results within 30 minutes – is a key component to keeping children in classrooms and workers on the front lines as the virus continues to work its way through the community.
The tests are particularly important in schools, where students are required to test every day for 10 days in order to attend class, if one of their classmates has tested positive.
Visitors and returning residents are also required to take three lateral flow tests, on days two, five and seven, after arriving in Cayman.
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