THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Additional chief secretary Tom Jose’s decision to ensure fairness and transparency in purchases as Kerala Minerals and Met-als Ltd managing director may boomerang if the Vigilance and Antico-rruption Bureau recommends his suspension from service pending inquiry. The Vigilance has filed an FIR, citing Mr Jose and five KMML officials as defendants. Vigilance director Jacob Thomas is expected to submit the recommendation to home secretary Nalini Netto early next week.
The main charge is that Mr Jose ordered a global tender for purchasing 250 tonnes if magnesium during his brief seven-month tenure and the company lost '1.23 crore in the deal when compared to the previous price. Mr Jose says in his defence that the norm is global tender because magnesium of 99.9 percent purity, required for the chemical process to separate titanium sponge from the tickle (titanium tetrachloride) is not available within the country. The company’s interests would be best served through an international tender than the limited bid for local agents.
The Vigilance case is built on the “clerical” logic though global tender is an accepted practice all over the world when the product in question does not have enough regional suppliers/vendors. The advantage of the tender is that while it gives equal chance to all suppliers, it benefits companies to get high quality materials at competitive prices. The price of magnesium, like all commodities, fluctuates. Besides, there are also foreign exchange rate fluctuations to consider. Prices may go up or prices may go down; this is a standard in any tender system. Mr Jose says he had seen the magnesium file only 3 times. The purchase order was issued to Kothari Metals on September 11, 2013, almost 2 months after Mr Jose left the company. His successor, Mr Michael Siromani, and team placed the order after following the established process of opening submitted tenders.
Mr Jose says the Vigilance move exposes a gross ignorance of purchase procedures and tender systems in practice in public sector companies. The decision for global tender was made by a group of professionals to ensure that the firm got high quality magnesium at competitive prices. In the months between the ads and purchase orders, the price of magnesium went up due to supply-demand situations and exchange rate differences. “Questioning a business decision made in good faith, attaching mala fide intentions and interpreting a perceived loss as corruption is to stretch the law too far to harm people and reputations. In this scenario most people will be extremely reluctant to take any decisions,” says Mr Jose.
