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By Sami Zaptia.
London, 19 October 2018:
Italian company, Soc. EI Impianti, signed what the Serraj government referred to as an infrastructure maintenance contract with Tripoli University Hospital (TUH) on Thursday.
The contract was signed by TUH’s director, Nabil Alageli and Soc. EI Impianti’s director, Cesare Leone in the presence of a representative from the Italian embassy in Tripoli.
The contract aims to upgrade the hospital so that it can perform its medical tasks and provide the best high quality medical services to patients, the Serraj Presidency Council statement said.
Alageli said that the Italian company is recognized for its competence and professionalism and will contribute directly to the maintenance of all the faults that led to the low level of services in the hospital over the past years.
This was because the hospital did not have regular maintenance in all areas, which led to the collapse of the infrastructure of the hospital, Alageli explained,
Moreover, he added that the Italian company will cooperate with the hospital’s engineering department that will oversee its work and help facilitate the Italian company’s work.
The TUH’s engineering department will also lend a number of its engineers and technicians in various disciplines to the Italian company, in order to take advantage of Italian experience in the field of maintenance.
For his part, Soc. EI Impianti’s director, Cesare Leone, said that his company will work with all professionalism to implement all the terms of the contract in the framework of cooperation with the hospital administration, to raise the level of services in various disciplines.
He also said that his company will provide work outside the contract, including maintenance of the helicopter landing pad, installation of a surveillance system as well as playgrounds and a children’s nursery for hospital staff.
The representative of the Italian Embassy confirmed that the signing of the contract was part of the joint cooperation between the two friendly countries of Libya and Italy in various fields.
She expressed her confidence that the Italian company will be an example in the field of hospital maintenance services in terms of efficiency and professionalism, to contribute to the improvement of the hospital’s service level.
Expressing her admiration of the size and design of the hospital with its high clinical capacity of 1,200 beds, which provides services to patients from all regions of Libya in various disciplines, she added, that this will benefit Libyan citizens from all over Libya in various specialities.
Meanwhile, well placed Tripoli sources have informed Libya Herald that the tender process for the TUH maintenance contract started as far back as November 2016.
They reported that there were two Libyan, a Turkish and a Korean company that tendered for the contract.
The source said that the opening of the tender offers and the awarding of the contract to the Italian company was delayed several times until October 2017.
There then followed a lengthy process to get the approval of the Audit Bureau, a process that is needed for all contracts above LD 500,000. The Audit Bureau apparently only approved this contract two days ago, the source said.
More importantly, and in a rarely stipulated move, the Audit Bureau imposed conditions on the contract.
The contract was initially awarded for just one year with the condition that the hospital provides a report after 6 months “of good standing and performance”, before the full five-year contract kicks in.
Asked why was the contract not awarded to a Libyan company, the source revealed that a Libyan company had been trying to maintain the TUH over the last year and a half, but that it did not have the necessary expertise to carry out all the more complicated electricity, hydromechanical, and civil engineering maintainance work needed by the hospital.
