The Department of Immigration and Passports (DIP) is set to procure a large number of machine readable passport (MRP) booklets from a UK-based firm, despite knowing that it is a “risky venture” that costs around Tk. 350 crore of the public exchequer’s money. It is learnt that even though DIP knew about the bidder’s non-compliance issues and past record of fraudulence and bad performance, the tender evaluation committee has recommended the UK-based firm for supplying 15 million MRP booklets.
“It is well known that it had failed to comply with all the criteria for sensitive currency paper in India and our BUET, Security Printing Press and BCSIR called it ‘not-complied’ as per sample testing… I find no reason for the government to take the risk of appointing a firm like that,” a frustrated DIP official said.
The firm had recently failed to fulfil an international contract in India for delivering a non-compliant/defective product and also for falsifying their quality reports, he added.
In September last year, DIP invited an international tender to buy 15 million MRP booklets as the stock of 6.6 million booklets procured in 2010 will be exhausted by July. The new booklets will be better than the current ones for a new design and improved thickness of the cover as well as inside pages.
According to DIP, seven companies bid for the task. Of them, two companies — UK based De La Rue and the Polish Security Printing Works — met all the physical criteria tested by the Security Printing Corporation of Bangladesh and thus became eligible.
DIP’s Tender Evaluation Committee declared two of the eight bidders “responsive”, namely, De La Rue of the UK and the PWPW of Poland. “De La Rue cannot be considered as responsive because they are not even eligible to participate in this tender as per ITT clauses 5.6 and 5.7 of the Tender Document. Tender terms restrict the bidders who have had history of fraudulent practices or cancellation of contract owing to defective supply as per the Public Procurement Act,” a senior official said.
This means that the company failed not only to comply properly, but also committed the act of forgery of documents to hide their non-compliance from their customers which is a clear case of fraud.
The Tender Submission Letter (form PG4-1), where the tenderer has to confirm a number of clauses related to past performances, is valued as affidavit. By signing this form, the tenderer states and confirms that it had no record of “poor performance” or “not properly completed contracts”.
In this case, having a track record of poor performance and not properly completing the Indian contract, De La Rue’s such false affidavit or non-inclusion of facts should automatically have resulted in non-compliance on grounds of “suppression of facts”.
When contacted, DIP DG Abdul Mabud said: “You can write whatever you like. I can only say that it will be continued.”
-With The Independent input
