We don’t care who gets the stadium tender – sport ministry

The sport ministry says it has not sidelined Namibian bidders in a lead consultant tender for the renovation of Independence Stadium.

Executive director of sport, youth and national service Erastus Haitangela said this earlier this week.

The consultancy job is estimated to be worth around N$60 million.

The government reportedly changed the requirements to bid for the tender from N$200 million to N$500 million. This means any company that did not work previously on a project worth N$500 million would be disqualified. The tender was advertised at least three times.

A local bidder on Thursday said the re-advertisement process was meant to eliminate competition and sideline local companies from participating.

Haitangela denied this.

“We don’t care about who gets the tender. We care about who meets the requirements and someone who can actually do the job,” he said.

Haitangela said the bidding process was revised to address the shortcomings identified by the tender review panel as per the cancellation notice the ministry received in May to restart the process.

“We had inputs from key stakeholders from the ministries of works, agriculture, mines, and finance. This was done to comply with CAF/Fifa regulations dealing with the construction/upgrading of stadiums to level categories 3 and 4,” he said.

He said the costs of such projects are above the amount his ministry indicated in the bidding documents.

“It is not true or correct that we are excluding local companies. In fact, the companies which submitted their bids recently are both Namibian registered companies, and if everything goes according to plan, the successful company to be awarded the lead consultancy service will be a Namibian company,” he said.

Haitangela said it is unfortunate that when a company realises it didn’t meet the minimum requirements, it is quick to cry foul.

“The ministry is satisfied with the progress made so far and hopes to conclude this important first step of procurement and to move on to the main project – commencing with actual construction,” he said.