‘Mantšali Phakoana
High Court Judge Moroke Mokhesi has nullified a contract between the Lesotho National Development Corporation (LNDC) and the Guardrisk Insurance.
The judgment delivered on Thursday this week stated that on August 30, 2022, LNDC had entered into a contract with Guardrisk for the provision of insurance brokering services.
Guardrisk Insurance competed with Minet Lesotho, Thaba-Bosiu Insurance Brokers, Signature Insurance Brokers, Insurecare, BMM, Insurance, Risk Managers and Thari Mutual for the tender that was issued by LNDC on June 8, 2022.
According to the judgement, on August 18, 2022, LNDC issued an award letter to Guardrisk Insurance. On August 26 the same year, Minet Lesotho lodged a complaint against the awarding of the tender, and requested the LNDC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to review the decision.
Part of the letter addressed to LNDC read as follows: “Minet Lesotho would like LNDC to review this decision on the grounds that eligibility requirement or scoring criteria was neither featured on the selection criteria nor or on the instructions to bidder as contained on request for proposal (RFP) for provision of insurance broker services.
“We therefore, believe it was unfair and improper that this scoring criteria was deployed as the detriment of our bid. The debriefing team also informed Minet Lesotho that this criterion was deployed in complying with the LNDC’s procurement policy that was issued to the public; and one would have thought that this material requirement would have reasonably been captured on the RFP as introducing it at evaluation stage will be akin to moving the goalposts …” (sic)
According to the judgment, the letter reached the CEO’s office the same day it was written but was never responded to. Instead, the CEO signed a contract with Guardrisk Insurance on August 30, same year.
Minet Lesotho’s complaint regarding the procurement policy related to the fact that request for proposal did not include the percentage margin regarding Basotho shareholding.
Judge Mokhesi on Thursday ruled that the tender award letter written to Guardrisk by LNDC interim CEO Molise Ramaili was unlawful and irregular.
The judge therefore cancelled and set aside the service level agreement signed between LNDC and Guardrisk since an objection by Minet Lesotho was still pending.
LNDC and Guardrisk were ordered to pay all the costs endured by Minet Lesotho in the court application.
