The Judiciary Police (PJ) announced yesterday that they had launched a follow-up investigation into the contract fraud of the Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM) by an outsourced company with subpar replacements of street nameplates, resulting in the questioning of two males for allegedly pasting stickers onto the nameplates’ white ceramic tile surface during a street nameplate replacement project.
This, according to the Judiciary Police, resulted in 362 street nameplates across Macau not displaying underglaze colours in line with the bureau’s official craftsmanship requirements, among which the stickers on 44 of the nameplates had already peeled off the surface and lost their colour.
During a regular press conference yesterday, PJ spokesman Lou Chan Fai corrected the date of receipt of the report, making it clear that the Judiciary Police received a letter from the Municipal Affairs Bureau last Thursday, stating that during its inspection of Macau’s newly installed, Portuguese-style blue-and-white porcelain street nameplates, its officials found that some of the newly installed nameplates showed signs of poor craftsmanship, and the quality of the nameplates obviously did not comply with the contractual specifications. Previously, the Judiciary Police said that it had received the report on Friday.
The letter also stated that the bureau suspected that the outsourced contractor had merely pasted stickers onto the nameplates in a way that did not conform with the method of displaying underglaze colours, as stipulated by the contract with the outsourced company, which had won the bureau’s public tender about the project.
Lou quoted the bureau as saying that the street nameplate project involved the installation of 362 street nameplates at a cost of over 1.1 million patacas, ranging from 600 to 1,200 patacas per nameplate, underlining that the contract specifically required the process to be done by underglazing at high temperature.
On April 19 last year, according to Lou, the Municipal Affairs Bureau launched a public tender for the manufacture and installation of the street nameplates. A total of nine contractors, including the company of one of the two suspects in the case – a local man surnamed Ao aged 47, were eligible to bid for the project.
According to the bureau’s report, in September last year, the main contractor provided samples of ceramic tiles as required by the contract, together with a satisfactory test report from a testing company in Foshan City in Guangdong Province. Complying with the requirements of the contract, the bureau immediately arranged for the installation of the 362 new street nameplates in various streets in Macau, but subsequently found that of the 362 street nameplates installed, 44 were visibly peeling, and most of the remaining ones showed discolouration.
The Judiciary Police intercepted the two suspects at their respective companies – Ao in the northern district and a 39-year-old mainland man surnamed Mai, the project manager of a subcontractor located on Avenida do Almirante Lacerda, according to Lou, who noted that the duo failed to give any explanations as to why the street nameplates did not display underglaze colours in accordance with the process required by the bureau’s contract, while Ao said that after accepting the project from the bureau, he immediately handed over the contract to the subcontractor to carry out the street nameplate project, but the two companies never signed any agreement on their cooperation.
Lou said that there existed strong indications that the two suspects have committed the crime of contract fraud and that their cases were transferred yesterday to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) for further investigation, adding that the Judiciary Police do not rule out the possibility that more people are involved in the case.
Meanwhile, the Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM) warned members of the public not to try to tear off the plastic sheets the bureau has temporarily pasted onto the “problematic” street nameplates until they are all replaced, reaffirming that all the “problematic” street nameplates will be replaced upon completion of the porcelain firing process. All the replacements are expected to be completed within the fourth quarter of this year, the bureau said.
Macau’s street nameplates are widely regarded as a part of the city’s cultural heritage, and they are popular with tourists posing in front of them.
This undated handout photo provided by the Judiciary Police (PJ) yesterday shows a PJ officer checking the subpar quality of a newly installed street nameplate on Rua dos Eucaliptos in Coloane, with a temporary plastic sheet pasted onto the sign by the Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM).
