ICTA’s second response on BT story
View(s):The Information & Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), this week sent a second response relating to our story headlined “Samsung Network to get multimillion dollar e-NIC project” Here are excerpts of the letter titled “Facts on LGN not disclosed by Business Times” issued by Athula Pushpakumara, ICTA Director – Strategic Communications and Media: “Without addressing the core issues of the baseless allegations, Business Times has tried to practice ‘word-play journalism’ to reply us and brought in irrelevant footnotes.
Business Times’ main allegation was that ICTA signed an agreement with a company called Asset Network as per its first article on the subject published on Sunday 30th December 2012 and the second article on 6th January 2013.
We, the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) maintain that ICTA never signed any agreement partially or in full with a company called Asset Network for the Lanka Government network project (LGN). We challenge Business Times to publish such agreement (if any). In the previous article, Business Times firmly stated that there were only two companies which bid for LGN and asked ICTA to give details about any other bidders for the said contract. According to the available details, there were three companies that bid for LGN, namely Samsung, KEBT Korea and KTN.
We categorically deny that the Samsung bid was the highest bid for LGN as per the accusation by Business Times. The highest price for LGN was quoted by some other company. Out of consideration of procurement guidelines and business ethics, I am not able to disclose the highest bid or provide any further details in this regard. The LGN tender was handled totally and evaluated by a Cabinet-appointed Tender Board and there was no way ICTA could have been involved in the process, as accused by Business Times. This tender Board included three Ministry Secretaries and one Additional Secretary. The Samsung bid was the lowest evaluated bid for LGN. If Business Times has any evidence to disprove this, it is the responsibility of Business Times to publish the details to defend its accusations against ICTA.”
Business Times Editor: We stand by our story. With reference to ‘irrelevant footnotes’ as claimed by Mr Pushpakumara, we are in possession of two letters dated 10-09-2007 and 06-09-2007 sent by the divisional secretaries Redeemaliyedda and Thumpane, Mr. J.B. Ranepura and K.K. Karunaratne to ICTA expressing their concern on major problems they had to face due to the use of low-quality IT equipment supplied to them under the e-government network project. The letters state that computers supplied to them were unusable.
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