The Electoral Commission (EC) has finally cancelled the tender process for the procurement of the Election Results Management System (ERMS) for the 2016 elections.
As part of the procurement process which began from March 2, 2016, two vendors out of three shortlisted companies qualified for technical demonstration and financial evaluation of their bids.
The EC was planning to spend about $30 million on the project, despite calls for its cancellation by some concerned Ghanaians, who claimed that it was going to be a drain on the country’s resources.
But a statement issued yesterday by the EC and signed by its Head of Communications, Eric Kofi Dzkpasu said, “After a careful assessment of the technical demonstration and evaluation of the technical and financial proposals, the evaluation panel was not satisfied with any of the tenderers.”
The panel’s conclusion was influenced by the fact that the selected companies failed to meet the technical criteria.
Aside that, the panel was also said to have expressed concern about the technical ability of the tenderers [the companies that submitted bids] to execute the project satisfactorily.
According to the EC, “The tenders submitted showed the need to significantly revise the scope of the project” and therefore had to cancel the tender.
“For the above reasons, the Commission endorsed the unanimous recommendations of the evaluation panel and has decided to discontinue the project,” the statement, explained.
Accordingly, the Commission has resolved to as it were, augment its internal capacity to deploy a modest results collation and transmission system for the 2016 general election, which is barely three months away.
“This system has been utilized successfully in the four parliamentary by-elections conducted by the Commission since July 2015,” it maintained, adding, “The system would be fine tuned and demonstrated to the political parties and other stakeholders involved in the elections results collation process before the December 7, 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections.”
There were agitations by the opposition political parties, spearheaded by the New Patriotic Party (NPP), that investing such a huge amount of money on electronic transmission of results was just waste of money, especially at the time the national coffers are dry. However, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) had a contrary view.
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