Our View: Wildfire alert system lost in bureaucracy

The main reason there had been no Public Warning System (PWS) in operation during last week’s wildfires, to issue people in the middle of the blaze with much-needed information, was predictable. The tenders’ procedure, which was set in motion in 2022 had not been completed. According to the latest information put out by the interior ministry earlier this week, the procedure was scrapped in May 2024, presumably for the usual reasons, and a new invitation for tenders was submitted in December of that year which is now in the final strait, so to speak.

Tenders were submitted at the end of February, evaluations were completed last month and if no objections are submitted by Monday, the contract would be signed in September with a completion date some time in the first half of 2026. If experience is anything to go by, this is no certainty. There are companies – one in particular that bids for countless public projects – with an expertise in stalling the procedure if they are unsuccessful. Objections are invariably technical and often ludicrous – lawyer could argue that the wrong word had been used or that a rival bid was submitted five seconds after the deadline – but lead to the annulment of the whole procedure.

Legal technicalities are often decisive, which is why the attorney-general’s office vetoed the suggestion of fast-tracking the process for the PWS. He knew that this would give legal grounds to an unsuccessful bidder to have the process cancelled, which has happened on countless occasions. The Tenders Review Authority rules on case, basing its decisions on the letter of the law which is not necessarily in the best interest of the contracting authority that usually the state.

For example, the contract must be awarded to the lowest bid, although this might not be the best solution. A classic example was the Pentakomo waste treatment plant which was awarded to a joint venture of two companies, with no previous experience in waste treatment plants, because their bid was by far the lowest. After many years of failure to satisfy the requirements of the contract by the company, the government decided to terminate it and close the plant.

The principle that cheapest is always the best solution is fundamentally flawed. In the above case the government went for the cheapest option, but it turned out not only to be the costliest but also the most ineffective. Expertise and experience have a premium which the rules governing our tenders’ procedures do not seem to recognise. Another problem that has never been addressed appears to be the quality of the technical specs in tenders’ documents. The people who write these have been doing a terrible job, as decisions are often challenged and annulled because omissions in the text of the tender documents.

Then there is the Tenders Review Authority which judges objections strictly on legal grounds. Its members do not always have the knowledge to evaluate the merits of a tender and therefore have to base their decisions on ticking boxes. Nothing seems to work rationally, which is why the tenders’ procedures cause so many serious problems with the functioning of the state. It is time for a major rethink of the procedures and for radical change, as the current system is not fit for purpose.