There are 21 projects worth Tk 708 crore on the official agenda of the purchase committee meeting while two other schemes might be tabled as 'miscellaneous' items today.

Sources said various vested interest groups involved with the problematic projects believe that there is a little time to rectify the anomalies and for getting them approved by the purchase committee within the tenure of the current government.

These vested interest groups include powerful young politicians of the alternative powerhouse of the government, a son of an influential senior minister, a section of bureaucrats, and pro-government business lobbies.

Of these procurement proposals, there are three from the telecoms ministry. Interestingly all the three have serious anomalies. There are 12 projects from the housing ministry the majority of which has anomalies. The local government and rural development (LGRD) ministry seeks approval for two projects one of which has allegations of irregularity against it. The ministries of health, communications, industries and power each have one proposal.

The two 'miscellaneous' projects are the Tk 1561 crore machine-readable passports, visas and national identity cards scheme and the Tk 139 crore Dapdapia Bridge construction project. The purchase committee rejected both of these schemes in the recent past.

TELECOMS SCAMS
The first agenda will be the telecoms ministry's Tk 32 crore proposal for installations of high capacity optical fibre line and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) transmission link connecting Dhaka-Bogra-Rajshahi-Nawabganj, and Moghbazar-Srinagar. Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) in its June 2005 bid selected a Chinese company, Huawei Technologies.

The Daily Star last week reported that Huawei treated members of the technical evaluation committee, in the tendering process, to foreign trips.

However, following formal objections from an aggrieved bidder ZTE that BTTB had blatantly favoured Huawei, a government review panel found that both the bidders had actually been unresponsive to the tender. It found that BTTB had pushed out ZTE from the tender process giving it penalty points for lapses in its offer but at the same time, BTTB had not penalised Huawei for having the same lapses.

The review panel in its decision in last July said, "re-tender should be called after making specifications more correctly and clearly. Penalty points should be shown against each item where applicable."

The second telecoms ministry deal is the Tk 99 crore supply of 185 units of radio link for BTTB's rural network, to be awarded to another Chinese company China National Machinery & Equipment Import & Export Corporation (CMEC).

However, documents reveal that the original bid sought 220 units of radio link. CMEC became the lowest bidder but its price was 2.5 times higher than BTTB's budget. On April 28, 2004 BTTB decided to re-tender the project. But that never took place.

Instead, on June 13, 2006, the Chinese vendor directly persuaded the telecoms ministry and BTTB retracted the re-tender. Then BTTB doubled the budget but reduced the total number of radio links to 185 units. The move will make BTTB pay far higher price for a lesser number of equipment.

The third telecoms deal is again set to go to Huawei. All the tender bids for this Tk 26 crore project to supply four units of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) platforms to BTTB were found technically unresponsive by another review panel of the government. On July 24 last, the review committee gave its decision asking to re-tender the project. But the telecoms ministry brushed aside the verdict and forwarded Huawei's proposal to the cabinet committee.

CWASA'S FAULTY DEAL
Another government review panel on July 31 contradicted the LGRD ministry's Tk 64 crore proposal to award a contract to local DCL & Associates for setting up a water treatment plant under Chittagong Wasa. Earlier in March, the Cabinet Purchase Committee also smelt a rat in this deal and rejected it.

The review panel detected gross irregularities in the tender, which was set to award the contract to a bidder quoting a suspiciously low price of Tk 64 crore which is Tk 30 crore lower than the second and third lowest offers.

The review panel of the planning ministry concluded that if the contract is awarded to the so-called lowest bidder, the purpose of the tender will not be properly served. It asked the authorities to negotiate with the second lowest bidder.

Earlier in March, following the purchase committee's rejection, a three-member probe committee was set up with the LGRD secretary as its head. This committee also filed its report in July. Interestingly, the secretary recommended awarding the job to DCL & Associates, while the other two members a Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology professor, and the director general of Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) strongly opposed it.

A DOZEN LAND DEALS
Of a dozen land deals worth Tk 222 crore, 10 schemes involve land development for Uttara Third Phase Residential Town Project at a cost of around Tk 100 crore. Sources said a vested interest group bagged the deals but they are not doing the jobs. Instead, these contractors sub-contracted the jobs to third parties at much lower costs.

The eleventh land deal is the Tk 18 crore development work for Purbachal New Town scheme.

The twelfth deal is land development at a hefty cost of Tk 104 crore for Jhilmil Residential Project. Three years ago, when the housing ministry floated tender for this job, it attached a condition that the bidder must own a dredger to qualify. The idea was to use the dredger to collect soil from the river near the project for land filling.

Sources said the condition was imposed to award the contract to a particular party as it is not the concern of the authorities how a contractor supplies soil to fill up low lying lands.

Two years back, one bidder was selected to do this job at the rate of Tk 107 for per cubic metre of land development. However this bidder could not use the dredger.

Now the authorities have lifted the condition of using the dredger and increased the cost of per cubic metre land filling to Tk 137 from Tk 107, increasing the project cost by Tk 24 crore.

BARAPUKURIA POWER PROJECT
The power ministry proposed a Tk 11 crore deal for one year service from experts of the Chinese company CMEC at the 250 mw coal fired power project in Barapukuria.

Sources said the government already spent nearly 2 million dollars to train its own manpower to run the plant. CMEC's contractual term expired and its experts should have left the country by now. However, sources said the experts are continuing to work at the plant without any approval from higher authorities. The power ministry's proposal is aimed at legitimising the experts' over-stay and the unnecessary payments made to them, while the plant is under-performing and running behind schedule.

The power project was built at a cost of nearly 260 million dollars under supplier's credit costing over 100 million dollars more than other projects of similar size. A brother of an influential parliamentarian of the ruling BNP is the beneficiary of all components of this project as the local agent of many Chinese companies involved there.

OTHER DEALS
Other deals to be tabled today include a Tk 185 crore procurement of 1,00,000 tons of fertiliser, settlement of Tk 30 crore extra financial claims by the contractor of Pakshi Bridge, setting up of the National Institute of Neuro-science at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka at a cost of Tk 37 crore, and Tk 6 crore appointment of a supervision consultant for the Gulistan-Jatrabari flyover.

MRP-NID
The home ministry's Tk 1561 crore proposal for procuring machine-readable passports (MRP), visas and national identity cards (NID) from a German company G&D might also be tabled today. This proposal was rejected on July 17 and the home ministry was asked to re-tender it and to drop the costly NID component from the re-tendering.

But a powerful group -- eager to draw commission from G&D by getting the project approved using their influence -- succeeded in reviving it through the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). The PMO asked the finance minister to approve the scheme.

The home ministry's proposal says that in the first year of the five-year programme, three million MRPs will be issued. During this phase, the contractor will provide necessary hardware, software, local and foreign manpower, and consumables to the immigration and passport department.

The home ministry adds that the new passports and ID cards will increase acceptability of Bangladeshi passports internationally, which will eventually increase overseas employment, help implementation of the government's national security policy, boost direct revenue earnings, and resolve international pressure on Bangladesh on introduction of such passports etc.

Bangladesh has an international obligation to introduce MRP by 2007. But there is no obligation for the NID scheme. In addition, there is no approval of the prime minister to set up a national registration department which will issue NIDs. In addition, the law required for the NID implementation has yet to be framed.

DAPDAPIA BRIDGE
The purchase committee earlier rejected the Tk 139 crore Dapdapia Bridge project on the Barisal-Patuakhali Road. The purchase committee asked the communications ministry to form a committee to find out why the tendering authorities had selected the second lowest bidder for the construction.

The ministry argued that since the lowest bidder's offer was 30 percent lower than the estimated project cost and the second lowest bidder's offer was 22 percent lower, it assumed that lower price offer implies lower quality of work and that is why it picked the second lowest bidder.