Commission Against Corruption, Macao SAR

When handling a complaint, the CCAC found that a company was awarded two service contracts by the Sports Bureau (ID) in March 2024 through public tenders, including “management and lifeguard services at outdoor swimming pools and sports facilities with swimming pools under the ID in Macao” and “management and lifeguard services at outdoor swimming pools and sports facilities with swimming pools under the ID in the islands”, with the period of service from 1^st April 2024 to 31^st March 2026. However, the company, after being awarded the contracts, was not able to employ sufficient number of lifeguards and fulfil the obligations it promised in the tendering process. Also, it failed to pay the final guarantee by the specific deadline. As a result, the provisional guarantee was forfeit and the respective contracts were declared void.

In August 2024, the ID reorganised the said public swimming pools and initiated four public tenders for the same kind of services, namely “management and lifeguard services at the D. Bosco College Sports Centre and the Lin Fong Sports Centre under the ID”, “management and lifeguard services at the Olympic Sports Centre - Aquatic Centre and the Taipa Central Park Swimming Pool under the ID”, “management and lifeguard services at the Tamagnini Barbosa Sports Centre and the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Swimming Pool under the ID” and “management and lifeguard services at the Carmo Swimming Pools, the Cheoc Van Swimming Pool and the Hac Sa Park Swimming Pool under the ID”. All of the tender schemes specified the situations in which the tenderers would be considered unqualified, namely “having been punished with a fine or having the contract terminated by the awarding authority due to failure to fulfil the contractual obligations”. However, the ID eventually concluded that there was no situation that would make it consider that the said company failed to meet the requirements to be a tenderer. Thus it continued to adopt the same tender evaluation standards and, once again, awarded the company the contracts to provide management and lifeguard services at some of the public swimming pools, with the period of service from 1^st December 2024 to 30^th November 2026.

The CCAC understood that based on the principle of objective stability or stability of procedural documents, the information and rules indicated in the tender scheme or specifications should remain unchanged throughout the process. However, regarding the selection of evaluation items and specific definition of the evaluation standards by the ID, obviously, there is room for optimisation and in-depth consideration. The fact that a tenderer who was awarded a contract recently but failed to provide the due service was awarded the contract of the same kind of service again within a short period of time is incomprehensible and unacceptable. In order to ensure the impartiality of public administration, the CCAC considered that the ID should adopt appropriate measures in advance to optimise the evaluation items and standards in future public tendering processes. In particular, a comprehensive assessment of tenderers' strengths and weaknesses in terms of their performance and the quality of services they provided in the past should be carried out. Only in this way can the true quality of the tenderers be fully understood and the evaluations be fairer, more reflective of reality and convincing to the public.

The ID agreed on the CCAC's opinions and stated that it would adopt proper measures for optimisation in future public tendering processes, including introducing a “point deduction” mechanism to the evaluation standards indicated in tender schemes and reviewing the records of service contracts awarding to tenderers by the bureau in the previous 24 months. If non-fulfilment of the obligations promised in the tender proposal, violation of contractual rules or irregularities subject to fines, among other situations, is found, a “point deduction” will be applied to the evaluation item regarding the experience of service provision, thus fully reflecting a tenderer's past experience and service quality in the evaluations.