Posted on:
www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw
Owusu
Friday, December
02, 2016
It is turning out that the
contract awarded to Aero Vote by the Electoral Commission (EC) for the printing
of the Statement of Polls and Declaration of Results Forms popularly called
Pink Sheets appeared inflated.
Some local companies were said
to be willing to execute the same contract for less but the EC ignored them and
gave it to Aero Vote for GH¢7.2 million although the commissioner Mrs.
Charlotte Osei had variously insisted they wanted a value-for-money transaction.
Possible Intraction
Documents available to DAILY
GUIDE showed that there was a possible breach of procurement in the whole
selection process.
The actual tender at the
opening was GH¢8.95 million which the EC announced Aero Vote – a company that
was bankrupt as at 2013 but relocated to Ghana somewhere in November last year
– as the winner but by the time it reached the public, the amount had changed
to GH¢7.2 million.
Recently when the opposition
New Patriotic Party (NPP) raised issues about the propriety of Aero Vote’s contractual
obligations, the Communications Director at the EC, Eric Kofi Dzakpasu issued a
statement condemning the NPP for raising what he deemed as ‘false’ alarm.
“It is false that Aero Vote
was awarded a contract worth US$8.95 million for the printing of the Statement
of Polls and Declaration of Results Forms. The contract awarded to Aero Vote by
the Commission is way below US$2 million in value (GHS7.2 million),” he said
among other things in the statement.
Deafening Silence
Strangely, the EC has not
been able to explain to the public how they ended up with GH¢7.2 million as the
contract sum after Aero Vote had quoted GH¢8.9 million at the opening of the
actual tender.
According to the procurement
rules, any transaction worth more than GH¢1 million should automatically go
through the Central Tender Board for concurrent approval but in this Pink Sheet
contract which the EC says cost the taxpayer GH¢7.2 million, it does not appear
that rule was followed.
Besides, the EC Boss, a
lawyer, is said to be the Chairperson of the commission’s Entity Board and the
Central Tender Board was allegedly ignored.
Controversial Letter
The EC Boss, in a controversial
letter to the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) in September asking the authority
to re-open the process and admit Aero Vote to be part of the process, had laid
emphasis on the issue of value-for-money as her basis for getting the company
in.
Curiously, the EC as far
back as October 2015 had written to PPA about the procurement of electoral
materials including the pink sheets and had presented a list of companies that
were going to be part of the process excluding Aero Vote.
However, eyebrows were
raised last September, one clear year after the submission of the list, when
the EC Boss wrote again to the PPA asking the authority to include Aero Vote in
the process.
Aero Vote Existence
A source told DAILY GUIDE
that he believed that as at October 2015 when the EC Boss was writing to the
PPA to submit the list of companies to be engaged in the tendering process,
Aero Vote was not even registered in Ghana.
“Everything was given to the highest bidder.
There was nothing like competitive prices as claimed by the EC Chairperson,” a
source said, adding “the whole thing looked already fixed. You could see that
the commission had made up its mind to award the contract to a particular
company.”
Procurement Breach
The source further said that
Aero Vote’s selection appears to be in conflict with the procurement laws
because the tender laws says that every participating company must have two
years account (balance)sheet but that cannot be said to have been done.
Documents available to DAILY
GUIDE showed that apart from Aero Vote, three other companies namely Buck
Press, Acts Commercials and Innolink all put in bids but what was presented by
local giant Buck Press looked very affordable to the taxpayer but was
overlooked.
Highest Bidder
Buck Press’ bid had a sub-total
of GH¢3.582,830.00 at a VAT/NHIL rate of GH¢626,995.25 and a grand total of GH¢4.209,825.25
while Aero Vote had a sub-total of GH¢7.617,535.25 with a VAT/NHIL rate of GH¢1.333.068.67
and a grand total of GH¢8.950,603.92.
Acts Commercials presented a
bid with a sub-total of GH¢7.753,005.00 at a VAT/NHIL rate of GH¢1.356,775.88
and a grand total of GH¢9.109,780.88 while Innolink submitted a sub-total of
GH¢7.817,578.15 at a VAT/NHIL rate of GH¢1.368.076.18 and a grand total of GH¢9.185,654.33.
Spirited Defence
The EC Boss clarified the issues on BBC when she put up a spirited defence
for Aero Vote saying “the company has always printed it (pink sheets) for us
and has now relocated to Ghana which made their pricing better for us.”
However, the source contested
Ms. Osei’s claim saying the company had never been engaged by Ghana in previous
elections.
He said there could
not be any extra cost as claimed by the EC because the tender documents showed
clearly that the election materials will be delivered at their warehouse directly.
No comments:
Post a Comment