COMELEC Warned Not to Bend Bid Rules to Accomodate Remaining Vendor

Posted on May 25th, 2009. Written by Rico.

The remaining company in running for the P11.3 billion election automation contract is not being truthful with its documentation, said one of its former competitors.

Chung, in his letter, raised alleged irregularities in the documentary requirements submitted by Smartmatic/TIM that show it will engage in subcontracting to manufacture the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines in the 2010 polls.

Chung said Smartmatic will not only engage Taiwan-based Jarltech International Inc. to manufacture the machines, but Jarltech will also turn around and subcontract the work to another Taiwanese manufacturing firm, Kenmec Mechanical Engineering Co. Ltd.

Earlier, SBAC disqualified Smartmatic/TIM since the ISO 9001:2000 quality management standard certification it submitted was issued to Jarltech. In its website, Smartmatic referred to Jarltech, a supplier and manufacturer of point-of- sale technology and automatic identification and data capture, as its “manufacturing arm.”

SBAC earlier noted Jarltech is not part of the consortium, but Smartmatic later verbally claimed that Jarltech is its subsidiary, or one that it majority owns.

Yet records show that Smartmatic only owns 10 percent of Jarltech.

Full story on Newsbreak. Smartmatic has offices in the Philippines, and so far doesn’t seem be anything like Election Systems & Software. It has prepared a Media Kit for the Philippines.