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Clarification, our reply Raredeer

FROM PAGE 1
Hasty BTCL deal raises questions", the BTCL said as per Public Procurement Rules (PPR section 102(1]) BTCL's director (procurement) office issued Notification of Award to KT Corporation on March 2, 2009.
According to PPR 2008, the BTCL managing director has no scope to do anything in this regard.
About wrong certificate provided by KT Corporation, the statement said as per PPR 2008 (section 92-2) any bid must be evaluated following the measurements mentioned in the tender documents. The bid shall not be considered by any other measurement
Contradicting with the news report, the BTCL said the bid document did not dictate that a bidder would be considered non-responsive if it fails to comply with the BMT certification criterion. Therefore, KDN's allegation that KT Corporation submitted wrong BMT certificate was not correct
The statement said KT had done benchmark test in China for equipment it mentioned to supply from Chinese telecom vendor Huawei and such process completely complies with the tender process.
OUR REPLY
New BTCL Managing Director SM Khabiruzzaman was not present in the ninth board meeting held on February 19. We reported that the board chaired by the past MD gave a verbal nod to award the contract to KT Corporation in that meeting, bitt as some board members pointed out KT's anomalies it decided to form a committee to make the final recommendation.
But before this committee could come up with its recommendations, the new MD, who joined BTCL on February 22, ordered to award the contract to KT on March 2.
Again, the BTCL board approved Khabiruzzaman's appointment as the MD of the company at the 10th board meeting held on March 11. His job contract with the government was signed on March 4.
Therefore, the new MD committed two major irregularitiesignoring the previ-
ous board decision and enforcing a decision although he was not legally holding the position. It also raises question, why didn't he wait for the appointment and contract before giving a decision on a Tk 140 crore procurementproject?
According to section 10.1 of the bid documents, BTCL wants to purchase the equipment that passed the highly secured level of performance test. This means the project's equipment performance test results should be issued by telecom carriers or telecommunications technology association (TEA) in the bidder's country (South Korea). The document also says equipment test and BMT certification both shall be done in Korea.
Talking to The Daily Star on May 20, BTCL Director (Procurement) Ashok Kumar Mondal said the first BMT certificate of KT Corporation did not mention the country where it had conducted the performance test.
Then when the BTCL in a letter asked the company to name the country, KT Corporation admitted that they conducted the performance test in China, said Mondal.
Our question is, when BTCL found that a bidder conducted the test in China instead of Korea and hid that information, whydiditacceptitsbid?
Secondly, BTCL cut KT's three points in the tender evaluation score card for not complying with the same certification which also proves KT provided wrong BMT certificate.
Our third point is that at the prebid meeting some other bidders requested to ease the BMT certification issue but BTCL did not agree. BTCL's observation in this regard was that it shall not allow BMT test from any country except Korea as it cannot secure the quality of performance test in all countries.
We stand by our report
BTCL STATEMENT ON 'DE-FAULTING HUAWEI FORGIVEN'
On "Defaulting Huawei forgiven: New BTCL authorities waive penalty, questions arise", the statement said the Chinese vendor supplied PRAMAC instead of SDMO within the project timeframe. But the BTTB (now BTCL) did not
accept the generators as it mismatched with the tender requirements.
The statement said Huawei Technologies later informed that they will not be able to supply SDMO and gave acceptance to take necessary steps under clause 34.2 of the contract.
And therefore, as per the clause, necessary steps have been taken to buy five generators by local market through tendering process. The expenditure for purchasing generators will be realised from bank where project money are deposited.
BTCL also said it made no decision to impose penalty on Huawei.
OUR REPLY
Huawei's generator supply irregularity was initially addressed by the divisional engineer office Moghbazar, Dhaka of BTTB in May 2007. A letter issued by the office said Huawei tried to supply PRAMAC generators instead of SDMO as per bid requirement.
The letter also recommended that BTTB take "necessary steps in this regard accord-ing to the contract". Interestingly, the letter was "officially" received two years later on April 2, 2009 by the BTCL although it served as the basis of disagreement between Huawei and the BTCL from May 2007.
Between May 2007 and December 2008 project officials concerned repeatedly recommended imposing penalty on Huawei as per contract. According to letters by the officials concerned, there was a decision to impose 10 percent liquidity damage or Tk 14.86 lakh based on five generators valueTk 1.48 crore.
On October 21, 2008, Huawei in letter to BTCL requested not to impose any liquidity damage or any kind of penalty. Our question is, if there was no decision on imposing penalty, why did Huawei request not to impose penalty?
When this was done for nearly two years what prompted the new MD to waive the penalty on April 12?
We stand by our report.