Sri Lanka’s e-Passport project takes another controversial turn
Sri Lanka’s much tainted e-Passport project has taken another turn towards deviating from the original project proposal causing a massive financial loss to the country, Immigration and Emigration Department sources revealed.
De La Rue has now turned 360 degrees back from its commitment stating that it will only provide the e-Passport Personalization System, which will costs around Rs. 50 million, replacing the existing personalisation system at the Immigration Department.
A senior official of the Immigration department revealed that, Minister of Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure Harin Fernando has instructed his Secretary Chulananda Perera, to prepare a new Cabinet Paper with revised scope of the e-Passport contract to suit the needs of the company.
In November 2017, the Cabinet had approved the awarding of the contract to De La Rue Lanka Pvt Ltd on PPP basis as a direct contract without going through competitive tender procedure.
According to project documents, this amended proposal has been initiated consequent to De La Rue’s recent response that they were unable to provide an end-to-end e-Passport Processing and Printing System at a cost of Rs. 1.2 billion as they have originally agreed.
A senior Immigration Department official said that Minister Harin Fernando personally visited the department last Tuesday and instructed the relevant officials to draft the new Cabinet Paper.
The Business Times reliably learnt that the high political pressure to award the e-Passport contract to De La Rue has mounted on Minister Harin Fernando though he too is not convinced on this non-transparent move that is highly disadvantageous to the country.
The new Cabinet Paper is being prepared without the knowledge of the Minister of Internal Affairs S.B. Nawinna, who is the line minister handling the passport subject.
He was of the view that competitive tenders should be called to procure e-Passports for Sri Lanka.
The new twist in resizing the project scope and the investment by De La Rue will cause further disadvantages to Sri Lanka, official sources said.
In the Cabinet Paper No. 17/2522/749/022, dated 02nd November, 2017, Minister Fernando informed the Cabinet that De La Rue has committed to invest over Rs.1.2 billion being the capital investment required to migrate the country from the current machine readable passport (MRP) system to a new e-Passport system.
This cabinet paper also states that De La Rue Lanka will set up an end-to-end system including Data Capture, Enrolment, Personalisation and Issuance of e-Passports.
This included the provision of infrastructure and systems at the five offices in Sri Lanka and in 56 Sri Lankan Foreign Missions overseas.
This was the pledge given in the memorandum requesting the cabinet to give approval to award the project to De La Rue Lanka Currency and Security Print (Pvt.) Ltd. (De La Rue) on Public-Private Partnership basis as a direct contract without going through competitive bidding.
Cabinet approved the proposal considering the investment De La Rue has committed on this project.