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Govt misses deadline for laptop re-tender

Jun 21, 2011 News

The government has missed its stated deadline to re-advertise the tender for the supply of laptops under the One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) project, under which it is asking for different specifications in hopes of attracting a larger volume of bidders.
The new invitations for bids were set to be re-advertised Friday last, but to date, this has not been done and there has been no announcement for the delay.
An official said that out of abundant caution, the bid documents were being tidied up, and the call for bids could go out by tomorrow. Kaieteur News understands that the government has identified Minister of Labour, Manzoor Nadir, to lead the project, and his absence from Guyana could have had something to do with the delay.
Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon, formally announced last week that the new call for bids would have gone out last Friday, and these would be opened on July 19.
The decision to re-tender for the supply of the laptops follows the determination by the government not to accept any of the three bids submitted in the first process.
Under the first advertisement, three bids were submitted. Two of the original bidders did not meet the requirements and the government did not want to settle for the third bidder who largely met the requirements.
A decision was taken to open a new bidding process, asking for different laptop specifications.
Advertisements for new bids are being launched following “a series of engagements” with both bidders and “an extended group of stakeholders.”
One meeting was with bidders alone, while another meeting was held with specialists in Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) and persons with commercial interest in ICTs, Luncheon stated.
Original bids for the supply of the laptops came from Giftland Office Max, Digital Technologies, and CCS. Of the three, only CCS measured up, though, not satisfying all the requirements.
However, the Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh had said that the government decided not to give CCS the contract, and to instead move to re-tender.
In re-tendering, the government is moving to adjust the technical specifications for the laptops it wants.
Dr Singh said that the specifications the government will now ask companies to bid for would not significantly depart from what was originally requested.
The Finance Minister pointed to new specifications for the laptops that would now be sought in the re-tendering process.
“Some of the issues that will inform the approach to the retender will include such issues as the technical specifications of the hardware to be procured, the software specs to be preloaded on the machines and the capacity of the suppliers to offer and service the required warranty provisions. ,
The government has budgeted to spend $1.8 billion on the laptop project this year, and plans to distribute an estimated 27,000 laptops.
Families were given until last Tuesday to apply for the laptops, but with the decision to re-tender for the supply of the laptops, applications have reopened.
The Finance Minister said that up to early this week there were some 33,000 applicants, many of them single parents and people in the low income bracket.

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