A local authority disqualified a tender bid because one of the components of the bid had a slight deviation of ILS18 below the minimum wage.
The Court accepted the petition and revoked the decision to disqualify the winning bid due to unreasonableness. The protection of the bidder employees’ rights in a public tender is an integral part of the tender laws. However, the tender documents must be detailed and clear, and worded accurately and exhaustively. Here, the bidders in the tender were required to make a separate financial bid for two different parts of the tender. In the first part, the bidders were required to offer a limited discount and in the second part, the rate of the discount was not limited and no provision was made in this regard. Here, the bidder offered the maximum discount allowed in the tender in the first part and in the second, which was a secondary part, offered a discount rate of 40% that applied to a variety of works and a large number of components. The deviation from the minimum wage was discovered in only one of many other components and was minimal. The bidder has been providing gardening services to local authorities for 20 years, with an annual turnover of over ILS 24 million and there was no apprehension of harming workers' rights, especially when there are mechanisms in the agreement that guarantee it. As it is not a “deficient bid” as a whole, the tender committee's decision to disqualify the bidder due to a minor deviation in one single and secondary component, exceeds the range of reasonableness and the bidder is to be declared as the winner of the tender.