Friday 18 March 2011

EAST TIMOR COUNCIL MINISTERS KILLED AUSTRALIAN LIFESE ENGINEERING


Tempo Semanal-Dili, 17.03.2011


According to Tempo Semanal source within the East Timor Council Minister's seating on Wednesday (16/03) said the government has cut the contract which given to an Australian company to build a temporary port for the two Timorese F-FDTL patrol boat.
Current Hera port

"The council Minister's concluded that the sydney based company has failed in honoring it's contract and the government has cut the contract today (16/03)," the source said.

The company has received some payment of US$ 4,447,000,- from the total value contract of US$ 7.1 million.

The original contract which signed between the government Timor Leste and Lifese engineering  company has determined a the project must finished by October 2010 but until today there is no port yet and sacrifice the two boat.

The government official informed Tempo Semanal that, "Lifese Engineering which has closed relation to a well known and respective lawyer in Australia has violated the contract and should pay fine 10% to East Timorese Government out of the total project value of US$7,017,705.20. But instead Instead of pay fine to East Timor Government the Lifese wrote to Xanana's government on 20/10/2010 by accusing the Timorese side was causing the delay and  and demanded Timor Government to pay some amount of US$ 695,330.28 for “Delay of Project_300910.xls". It means the value of the temporary port goes up to US$7,713,035.38.

The contract was signed July 27th 2010 but some of the works started since April 2010 which was against violated the country's procurement law. Lifese Pty Ltd started their work on the temporary project based on a Letter of intend to award from Timorese Government dated 31/03/2010.

In July last year a member of parliament from opposition Fretilin party raised the issued of good governance and conflict of interest by the involvement of a world bank former adviser to East Timor Finance Minister.

Tempo Semanal is trying to confirmed with the representatives of the company in Dili. Unfortunately Ms Ines Almeida's phone is out of reached.

Tempo Semanal also has seek the copy Press releases from the Council Ministers since yesterday and the media department has promised to deliver but unfortunately no luck yet. A Timorese staff in the Council Ministers media department said sorry due to the delay. "It's happen because our adviser hasn't finished the press released yet," said a timorese staff. (TS)


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