By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
August 11, 2009

Low price but unqualified. Though it submitted the lowest bid offer for the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) P1.6 billion Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) project, Comelec rejected the proposal of the SAHI-Tiger IT consortium for failing to pass both of its technical and legal requirements.

In a press release, the Comelec’s Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) has declared the SAHI-Tiger IT (Strategic Alliance Holding Inc. – Tiger IT Bangladesh Ltd.) as “post-disqualified” for the poll body’s P1.6 billion project to “Cleanse the Voters’ List” or CVL for the 2013 elections.

Based on the Post-Evaluation Report submitted by the Technical Working Group (TWG) to BAC last Aug. 6, SAHI-Tiger IT failed to comply with the standards and requirements as set in the legal and technical specifications as required in the Bid Documents.

SAHI-Tiger IT underwent post evaluation screening last week after submitting the lowest bid offer of P1.2 billion, slightly lower than the P1.5-billion bid offer of its only competitor Unison Joint Venture (Joint Computer Systems Inc. and NEC of Japan).

According to TWG, SAHI-Tiger IT failed to comply with the requirement that the bidder’s Single Largest Contract (SLC) should be a contract similar to the nature and complexity to the contract to be bid.

“Tiger AFIS was only fully developed sometime in June 2009. The SLC that the Joint Venture of SAHI-Tiger IT submitted reveal that it was executed on November 2007, more than a year before Tiger IT was able to develop its own AFIS software,” the TWG said.

The TWG also found that many of SAHI-Tiger IT’s legal documents in the past were dubious.

“TWG noted that the Notary Public, a certain Atty. Maximo G. Alvarez, which certified and notarized many of SAHI-Tiger IT’s legal documents, including its Joint Venture Agreement, was found to be without authority to administer any oath, as ‘Atty. Alvarez’ is not a commissioned Notary Public,” the TWG reported.

With SAHI-Tiger IT’s disqualification, the BAC had asked Unison Joint Venture to deliver all the necessary requirements.

Comelec Spokesperson James Jimenez said the poll body’s CVL project has four components, which are: Validation of Existing Registration Records Using Biometrics and Data Capture System (P300 million); Online Data Submission and Synchronization System (P50 million); Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) Matching and AFIS Server Applications (P1 billion); and the Voter ID Cards Generation (P250 million).

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