Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has explained why his administration is providing jobs for local contractors to execute. He said this is to give them the required technical experience and to also populate their resumes and CVs so that they can qualify to bid for World Bank, CDB, and European Union contracts with success.
Skerrit made this clarification in response to concerns raised by members of the opposition that contracts are awarded to foreigners at the detriment of local contractors. UWP lawmakers on the floor of the House of Assembly accused the DLP government of marginalizing indigenous companies to favour foreign companies.
PM Skerrit however responded that this is not really the issue because there are lots of issues determining the award of contracts and the prior tendering processes.
He added that Dominica is not an isolated country and that “there are countries which are qualified under the rules of the World Bank to tender for any projects” so far they meet certain minimum conditions. He said there is no law compelling the awarding of contracts to local providers where foreign companies have better credentials.
He said one of the requirements include putting certain amount of money into the bank as a bond so that the client can access this in case of job defects or contract breaches. Skerrit however said that the government is trying to make local contractors qualify more for better contracts.
“This is what we tried to do by providing contracts to local [contractors] to get them to have CV’s and resumes [listing] the number of projects they have had with the contractual sums so that when they are tendering for projects from the World Bank, CDB and European Union, they can show their financial standing,” he said.
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