Group sees flaws in poll automation

A non-governmental organization said yesterday that no Filipino company alone has the capacity to pursue the automation project for the local and national elections in 2010.

“There is no Filipino entity that has the experience or the capacity to have engaged in a project this size. Let’s put in the right context, P11.3-billion loan not even consortium like Megalink or Bancnet just come up with that scale,” Philippine Computer Society member Edmundo Casino said yesterday after the pre-bid conference for the project at the Commission on Elections office in Intramuros, Manila.

The group is calling the attention of the Comelec to the lack of specific rules that would allow a consortium to bid for the automation project for the 2010 polls.

Part of the rules of the Special Bids and Awards Committee for prospective bidders is that the company has been in existence for at least three consecutive years prior to the advertisement of the IAEB (Invitation to Apply for Eligibility and to Bid).

The bidding company must also have completed at least three similar contracts and the aggregate contract amounts is equivalent to at least 50 percent of the approved budget for the contract.

The largest of these similar contracts must be equivalent to at least 25 percent of the budget for the project that was being bidded out, the same rules said.

“We understand that only telecommunication companies are the only ones that have the capacity, but are the telcos qualified to bid? That is not their business. Their business is telecoms, in the entire P11.3 billion if you would observe, what is allocated is something like a hundred or P200 million only,” Casino said. –Joel E. Zurbano, Manila Standard Today