Some of the damaged booths.
PHILIPSBURG--The second tender to repair the damaged booths in Jocelyn Arndell Festival Village failed, and Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs apologised that the repairs were not done in time for this year's Carnival and says she takes responsibility that the destroyed booths were not at least demolished.
She commented on the repair of the booths in response to a question during the live Council of Ministers press briefing last Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, the second tender that went out also failed, so I was not able to get an update as to the next step from those concerned,” she said.
“The Facilitates Management Department head who was in charge of that is currently out sick and so it then falls to the next person. So, I will do my best to get that answer to you by the end of the week [last week] as to the status of that project, but regrettably we weren’t able to finalise it in January as we had expected. It wasn’t expected to take that long. At least … the first phase could have been done pre-carnival to at least demolish the destroyed booths and I must say it is something that I am very much - I take responsibility for,” said Jacobs.
“It falls within my purview that we were not able to execute this in time for this Carnival as well. So, my apologies to all stakeholders concerned, but when we put out public tenders and they fail, unfortunately, there is nothing that we, who want the project to move on, can do, because at the end of the day… [we cannot] put someone to work when the tenders did not come out with a vendor that could prove to carry out the work within the scope that was given. So, I don’t know if we need to adjust the scope. All of this, I still need to get information on. So, bear with us as we gather that information,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs had told The Daily Herald before the 2023 Carnival got underway last year that the repairs to the booths would have taken place before this year’s Carnival. She said at the time that in the shorter term, the 13 damaged booths would have also been repaired. Jacobs had explained that the bidding process had been complete and the advice for the awarding of the tender had been in process at that time.
A total of 13 booths are currently out of commission and were to be totally repaired. In addition to this, the damage to the roofs of the stage and bleacher building were also supposed to have been repaired. She had said back then that in the longer term for the 2024 season it would have been expected that all booths would have received the necessary repairs and upgrades, as well as the stage and bleacher building. A budget of 1.4 million guilders had been allocated for this initiative.
