Chinese firm Haier Electrical wins OLPF contract. Written by Kwesi Isles
Wednesday, 31 August 2011 13:43
Chinese firm Haier Electrical Appliances Limited has won a US$7.5M contract to supply some 27,000 netbooks under the Guyana government’s ambitious One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) initiative.
This was revealed by Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon on Wednesday at his post-Cabinet media briefing which was also attended by Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh and OLPF Project Manager Sesh Sukhdeo.
The contract had been re-tendered after OLPF Office said that none of the three bids in the first round were fully compliant with render requirements. Eleven bids were received in the second from which three who were “substantially responsive” were selected Dr Singh stated.
He added that they were subjected to detailed scrutiny and awarded points on criteria met and additional information. The three criteria were technical specifications, inspections and tests and price.
“The additional information that has been presented by Haier Electrical Appliances Limited is that the bid will also provide 2 percent additional buffer of laptops. One of the criteria within the tender process was to make sure that we had a seven-day for netbooks on the warranty, 2 percent additional stock in spares,” Sukhdeo said.
He added that there is also an 18-month warranty period on the units and the cost of a logo being embossed on the machines at US$1 each.
The government is looking to provide some 90,000 netbooks to poor families over a two-year period with GUY$1.8B budgeted for the OLPF this year.
The verification of applications for the netbooks and training exercises are currently underway as the government looks to start putting the machines in the hands of families in October.
Labour Minister Manzoor Nadir had told Demerara Waves Online News (www.demwaves.com) earlier this month that at least 17,000 remaining households were to be verified.
Some 13,000 persons applied as single parents and 3,000 as disabled persons or households with disabled persons.
He said that of the 45,000 applicants, 27,000 will be receiving laptops in the first phase after verification and training are completed.
Nadir, who has cabinet responsibility for the OLPF, explained that the verification process includes the cross-referencing of applicants with existing databases on single-parents, disabled, low-income households and students who received government subsidies to sit CXC exams.
The Labour Minister rejected suggestions in certain quarters that the OLPF is a campaign tool for general and regional elections constitutionally due by December 28.
“This is not an election gimmick. This is about making a knowledge society. This is not about election because we would have given all 90,000 laptops and we would have just handed them out like if it is Christmas in October,” he said.
Nadir said the idea of creating a knowledge-based society is several years old, dating back to when Guyana had applied for a US$18 million loan from the Inter American Development Bank (IDB). At the time, the majority American-owned Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GT&T) had taken steps to successfully block the financing on the grounds that the Information Communications Technology (ICT) project would have infringed upon its monopoly rights on national and international data transmission.
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