Updated: Notte Bianca to go ahead as originally planned

All Notte Bianca venues will be set up for tomorrow night's show following a decision by the Court this morning rejecting an application for a warrant of prohibitory injunction against the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts.

The application had called on the Courts to prohibit the Council from granting contracts for the provision of sound and lighting equipment for the event.

The request was made by a consortium headed by Nexos and DJS Trading, who said they had submitted a bid to provide services for 36 activities but the council had requested bids for each activity separately.

In a reply, council chairman Adrian Mamo had argued that the two companies had until September 14 to submit questions and request clarifications but they failed to do so.

They accepted the clause that incomplete information could exclude them from the contract. They had been requested to file separate quotations but instead filed an umbrella one. As a result, the adjudication board was not in a position to evaluate their application.

Following the publication of the tenders' adjudication details, published before the temporary warrant was issued and before the council had received an objection letter from the companies, more calls for quotations were placed.

The council said that by law, three working days had to pass before a decision could be taken on who won the contract and had called for tenders to be placed so as to make the necessary financial projections. No contracts have been concluded and the council had no intention of concluding any before the time was up, it said. The process used to carry out the call for applications was transparent and rigorous.

An appeal by the consortium was also filed at the General Contracts Committee, which found that the council had acted in a transparent way and according to regulations.