Education ministry tenders sold underhand

 

Dec 09, 2015

The former Rajapaksa regime started a shoes distribution project for the school children’s under the education ministry and all school children’s would receive new shoes every year. This was a very essential and timely project as shoes are a part of the official school uniform. Under this project annually six to seven lakhs of shoes are distributed among the school children’s. 

The current government also has decided to continue this project considering the importance. This time in order to distribute shoes the education ministry has called tenders from shoe manufacturing companies and five companies have given their quotations.

When calling tenders the companies should give quotations for all sizes of shoes and relevant companies should be manufacturing school shoes for more than three years. Meantime these applicants should have obtained a quality certificate from Industrial Technical Institute (ITI), Industrial Development Board (IDB), Sri Lanka Textile Mills and Sri Lanka Apparel Industry (SLITA)
These tenders are not given to an individual company but distributed among a group of companies is because none of the companies are capable of fulfilling the complete tender order. Meantime the reason for distributing these tenders to few companies is to prevent the building of monopoly in the school shoes industry.

The following are the quotations announced by the education ministry during the opening of the final tender

DSI
Small size 9-11 Rs. 813.00
Average size 12-1 Rs. 850.00
Average size 2-4 Rs. 887.00
Average size 5-8 Rs. 931.00
Average size 9-10 Rs. 1078.00

Sarasavi (Ogel)
Small size 8-11 Rs. 820.00
Small size 12-1 Rs. 870.00
Small size 2-4 Rs. 920.00
Small size 5-10 Rs. 1020.00

Phoenix

Small size 10-11 Rs. 800.00
Average size 12-1 Rs. 844.00
Average size 2-4 Rs. 872.00
Average size 5-8 Rs. 922.00
Average size 9-10 Rs. 1075.00

Bata

Small size 9-11 Rs. 766.00
Average size 12-1 Rs. 810.00
Average size 2-4 Rs. 856.00
Average size 5-8 Rs. 900.00
Average size 9-10 Rs. 1050.00

Kevin Polymer
Small size 8-11 Rs. 783.00
Average size 12-1 Rs. 821.00
Average size 2-4 Rs. 851.00
Average size 5-7 Rs. 896.00

These companies have not given prices for sizes eight, nine and ten

Meantime these companies don’t have experience in manufacturing school shoes for more than three years.

The education ministry tender committee has decided to offer this tender to a single company for the first time when this project was started. When giving the tender despite there are companies given lower quotations the tender committee has selected DSI which has quoted a higher price. Apart this committee has decided to give an order of 50,000 shoes for the Kevin Polymers which has fulfilled the initial requirements of the tender procedures.

Although the last year tender was to supply six laks of shoes, DSI following obtaining the tender to supply four laks of shoes was unable to fulfill the tender. Phoenix shoes came forward and supplied 40,000 shoes which were unable to supply by the DSI.

When all other companies has submitted the tender documents with relevant standard certificates the tender committee has rejected them citing many technical reasons.

In order to get the cabinet approval the tender committee has falsely informed the cabinet that it selected the lowest tender. Although the other companies have urged the tender committee to give a valid explanation of their selection criteria the tender committee has failed to do so.

According to inside sources pressure has been exerted to an accountant and few persons in the tender committee and a large kick backs has been given to obtain the tender.

Meantime similar to this fraud shoes tender a fraud group of people working in the education ministry has decided to offer the school uniform tender to a known person by passing all tender procedures. When the information leaked the education minister has decided to distribute vouchers to the students instead of distributing official uniforms. We wish to disclose more information in the future regarding this.