“In addition, the tender required proof of financial resources with a minimum of Sh3 billion. The Olive Consortium provided credit report from China Construction Bank Corporation, which confirms that they are financially capable to handle business in excess of Sh30 billion,” they stated.
The board had however found that as Olive Telecommunications’ audited results were Sh6.9million, Sh14.2 million and Sh767million in 2010, 2011 and 2012 respectively, it did not meet the tender requirements.
“Olive Telecommunications did not meet the annual turnover of Sh8 billion for the last three years from the time of awarding of the tender. The bid therefore ought to have failed to pass the preliminary evaluation stage,” Monga’re explained.
The board also found that Olive did not qualify as an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) as required in the invitation to tender and that it quoted Sh1.4 billion in additional costs over and above its initial Sh23.2 billion bid.
Olive Telecommunications has however maintained that it is an OEM and that its competitors, HP and Haier, too had additional costs.
“To allege that only Olive quoted for additional services for which HP and Haier did not quote is plainly dishonest and malicious,” it said in defence.
It was the second time the Ministry of Education tendered for the laptops, excluding middle men, after they found the bids they received in the first round of tendering too high.
And following the second round of tendering, the Cabinet Secretary for Education Jacob Kaimenyi had said the first batch of 400,000 laptops would be in schools by the end of March.
But given it is impossible to predict how long the High Court will take to hear Olive’s petition, the promise of a laptop for each and every class one pupil in a public school remains just that, a promise.
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