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Download PDF The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications approved a $3.5 million contract with Huawei Technologies for installing an optical fibre transmission link between Dhaka and Rajshahi, side-stepping planning ministry’s repeated recommendations for blacklisting the Chinese vendor on ‘corrupt practices’ in winning the contract.
Purchase proposal of this scandalous deal will be placed on Monday before a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Public Procurement (CCPP), which will be chaired by Planning Minister M Saifur Rahman.
Since the youngest son of a very powerful minister from the north-eastern region represents Huawei, the telecoms ministry decided to close this unscrupulous deal brushing aside the planning ministry’s recommendation.
According to official documents The Daily Star has obtained, the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) under Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) of the planning ministry in its directive to the telecoms ministry said a former telecoms secretary along with BTTB high officials concerned had received undue favours from Huawei.
In October 2005, BTTB’s Member (Finance) Jamil Osman and its Director Nadir Shah Quraishi attended an exhibition titled PT/Wireless & Network Comm China 2005. While issuing a government order (GO) regarding the trip, the telecoms ministry wrote that Huawei Technologies of China will bear all expenses pertaining to these officers’ trips to China.
Interestingly, although the exhibition ended on October 22, the two BTTB officials were allowed to stay five more days in China in accordance with the GO for reasons unexplained.
Subsequently, in February 2006, Mahmood Hasan Mansur, the then telecoms secretary and SM Munir Ahmed, BTTB’s member (maintenance & operations), visited Spain and China to attend ‘3G World Congress’ again at Huawei’s expense, according to telecoms ministry’s internal documents.
In this case, the telecoms ministry grossly fabricated the purpose of the trips. The 3G World Congress was actually held in Barcelona from February 13 to 15, 2006. The GO for these two senior officers’ trips, however, provisioned five extra days (February 10 to 17) and tagged China as the fictitious second venue of the event that was actually held in Spain.
Since the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) approved the overseas trips of these officials, it is only logical to believe that the telecoms ministry bluffed the PMO regarding the objectives of these visits.
The CPTU found both the trips to be in ‘clear conflict of interest’ because these BTTB officials were members of the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) that was assessing Huawei’s bid proposal at that time. Besides, the telecoms secretary was also the head of the procuring entity.
On March 27, 2006 the CPTU asked the telecoms ministry to cancel Huawei’s bid on ethical ground followed by blacklisting the company as per regulation 15 of the Public Procurement Regulations (PPR).
The ministry replied on April 6, which the CPTU termed as irrelevant. The latter again, on May 5, asked the ministry to cancel Huawei’s bid followed by blacklisting the vendor.
In reply, on June 6, the telecoms ministry tried to bypass the PPR by labelling both the overseas trips as ‘general matters’. This time, the CPTU came down hard on the ministry and said the PPR forbids such overseas trips by members of the bid evaluation committee at the expense of a bidder.
The telecoms ministry, however, decided to ignore the legal provisions regarding public procurement and rewarded Huawei with a multimillion dollar deal instead. Now the matter is totally in the hands of Planning Minister M Saifur Rahman, who will be scrutinising the deal in Monday’s meeting of the CCPP.
Meanwhile, in another recent deal, Huawei supplied a grossly defective 15,000-line telephone exchange in Sayedabad, Dhaka. According to BTTB’s internal documents, Huawei deviated from a contract by not providing 27 various critical features of this exchange.
As a result, BTTB’s clients of this brand new exchange are facing a great deal of difficulties. Sources said BTTB has been unable to take any measure against Huawei since the vendor’s local agent is a family member of a very powerful minister.
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