Press conference questioned

AS a former service provider to the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone (PMIZ) project, I question the motive and intent of the press conference called by Commerce Minister Wera Mori and his consultant David Kumis.
They may have made fools of themselves.
They have shown how pathetic and shallow their understanding of the Government procurement and contract award and management system under Central Supply and Tenders Board (CSTB) is.
There is a specified scope of works under open-bidding to deliver the clearing and grubbing contract and fencing contract.
It is an insult to the engineers from Industrial Centres Development Corporation who scoped and managed those activities.
Some of them have moved on to deliver bigger projects like the PNG LNG and mining projects.
About 90 to 100 per cent of the
contracted works, according to scope, were completed eight to 10 years ago.
Secondary bushes may have overgrown due to stop-start implementation caused by NGO sponsored injunctions.
The fence was vandalised by settlers for gardening and shortcut tracks.
What would be the cost of one-metre steel fence of 2.5 meters
in length, sitting on a 30-40cm concrete slab basement including allowable culverts for water runoffs, covering a traverse length of 10,000 meters?
A variation was done to the gate to avoid traffic congestion to the main North Coast Road to bring the gate within 300m at K6 million.
The 300m four-lane concrete entrance is enough to land a Cessna 72. As a guide, a two-lane kilometre of sealed road costs K2-4 million.
The four-lane entrance gate of PMIZ is even bigger for K 4m well spent.
What would be the cost of uprooting one 25m-long mature coconut tree , cocoa and other native trees and shrubs covering over 200 hectares.
There were over 4000 trees cleared.
It’s better for an audit team to revisit and verify Wera Mori’s allegation.

Observer, NCD