The government is still optimistic that the laptops will be available in schools in January.
NAIROBI, Kenya Nov 15 – The government has extended submissions for the primary schools laptop tender project to Thursday next week.
Cabinet Secretary for Education Jacob Kaimenyi says this is in bid to answer any queries the bidders have over the tender.
“The process takes 21 days, so we have extended it by few more days, up to Thursday to address the concerns of the bidders,” he said.
Kaimenyi says already 58 companies have collected tender documents and is hoping that bidders quote low prices.
“This time round we do hope that the prices they are going to quote will be lesser (sic) because we expect them to deliver these gadgets to two places and for the rest of the country the gadgets will be delivered to Nairobi,” he explained.
The government terminated the primary schools laptop tender last month after the lowest bidder quoted Sh32 billion against an anticipated budget of Sh12 billion creating a deficit of Sh20 billion.
This was after an evaluation of the bids by the Education Ministry technical team revealed that the tenders ranged from Sh23, 000 per laptop to Sh28, 000.
“For each laptop it was supposed to be US$100 (Sh8500) but when we asked people to tender the price of the lowest gadget came to Sh23,000 that’s almost three times our budget, therefore we felt that really it was not proper,” he said.
He said it was important for the government to cancel the tender because it did not offer value for money.
Kaimenyi however is optimistic that the government will acquire the devices by the first quarter of 2014.
“The Government understands the urgency and need to procure the devices to actualize the project by the first quarter of 2014. However, the procurement proceedings must ensure economy, efficiency, transparency and accountability,” he said.
In the last bid, a total of 126 firms got the bid documents out of which 20 returned them but after the evaluation, only three met the technical specifications.
Other than the 1.3 million laptops set to be bought some 20,367 projectors and similar number of printers for schools will be purchased.
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