BLUE CROSS of Jamaica Limited and Sagicor, formerly Life of Jamaica (LOJ), will again do battle as they bid for the more than $2 billion Government Employee Administrative Services Only (GEASO) health scheme contract that has been put to tender for a third time.

Noel Foster, senior vice president for operations at Blue Cross, told The Gleaner yesterday that the company would submit a new bid for the contract.

"We are confident that our proposal will be hard to beat," he said.

LOJ, the island's largest insurance company, was the preferred bidder last year when the contract was put to competitive tender for the first time in 10 years. Last year LOJ had indicated that it would compete for any new contract that was tendered.

Yesterday calls to Karl Williams, assistant vice president for marke-ting at Sagicor, were not returned.

Strong objection

In 2007, the National Contracts Commission (NCC) had recommended that LOJ be awarded the contract, but the executive of the former government did not sign off on the proposal, due to strong objection from the GEASO monitoring group comprising unions representing public sector workers.

The group contended, last year, that the process to select a new provider was skewed, as the monitoring committee was excluded from two critical stages of the selection process.

The debate widened when Contractor General Greg Christie warned the then People's National Party administration that the inclusion of the monitoring committee in the selection process would breach government procure-ment guidelines.

Irreparable harm

Christie said last year that it would inflict "grave and irreparable harm to the integrity of the public sector procurement process."

However, Jamaica Teachers' Association executive Claudia Ferguson, who is a member of the monitoring committee, said yesterday the group had written to Dwight Nelson, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, requesting a meeting with him.