Ministry throws out bids for school laptops tender

The government on Thursday threw out all the bids for the supply of laptops, citing their pricing above its budget.

Education secretary Jacob Kaimenyi said the lowest bidder had quoted a price of Sh32 billion against a budget of Sh12 billion, leaving the State with a Sh20 billion budget hole.

“Given this budget deficit, the ministry found it prudent to terminate the tendering process in accordance with the provisions of the Public Procurement and Disposal Act of 2005,” said Prof. Kaimenyi during a media briefing.

Cancellation of the tender means the ministry must start the process afresh, making it impossible to supply the computers to schools in January.

Prof. Kaimenyi said the computers would now be delivered to schools at the beginning of second term in May instead of January as earlier planned. The ministry’s technical team that evaluated tenders said suppliers had priced each laptop at between Sh23,000 and Sh28,000 – or at least double the budgeted amount.

The State plans to spend Sh12 billion to buy 1.3 million laptops, translating to Sh9,200 per laptop.

(READ: State to light schools ahead of laptops launch)

Prof. Kaimenyi cited high standard specifications that the ministry had demanded as one of the reasons that pushed bid prices way above the budget.

The minister also said that there may have been collusion among the vendors to quote high prices even as he accepted that high insurance, transport and storage costs may have added to the high prices.

Prof. Kaimenyi said the ministry would review key aspects of the tendering process such as specifications to bring down the prices without compromising on quality. The fresh tendering process is expected to begin in four weeks’ time with advertisements in the local press. 

“The government understands the urgency in this matter and the need to procure the devices by the first quarter of 2014. We, however, insist that the procurement process must ensure economy, efficiency, transparency and accountability,” the minister said.

A total of 126 firms bought the bid documents, but only 20 submitted them consideration.

Evaluation

Preliminary evaluation of the returned forms left nine firms in contention for the multi-billion-shilling tender but only three met the technical specifications.

There was no mention of which firms had reached the final stage, but people familiar with the process said ZTE Corporation, Telkom Kenya and Mastec East Africa made the list.

On Thursday, it emerged that the lowest bidder HP Commercial had quoted Sh28.7 billion or more than twice the budget translating to a unit price of Sh20,639.

Chinese firm Huawei PTE, was the highest bidder having quoted Sh60.5 billion. Others were Samsung Electronics (Sh39.1 billion), Symphony Technologies (Sh38 billion), Haier Technologies (Sh34 billion), ZTE Corporation (Sh33 billion) and Telcom Kenya (Sh32 billion).

Mastec EA Ltd placed two bids quoting Sh32.6 billion in one and Sh31.3 billion in another while Shen Zhen Auto Digital quoted Sh30.3 billion.

The free laptop for every Class One child programme was one of the pillars of the Jubilee manifesto whose promoters say would make Kenya a world-class technology economy.

The State plans to spend Sh17.4 billion annually in the next three years to buy 1.35 million laptops, develop digital content, build teachers’ capacity and build computer laboratories for Class Four to Class Eight pupils throughout the country.

This means the laptops will only be given to students between Class One and Three and the accumulated units would then be used to stock the laboratories. That means the government will spend on the flagship project for only three years and then migrate all pupils to the computer laboratories.

The total spend over the three years has been put at Sh53.2 billion and is partly informed by criticism that it would be cost effective to introduce computer labs in schools over laptops.

The ministry also seeks to procure 20,637 printers and to distribute a similar number of projectors to each primary school countrywide.

Some 150 trainers, mostly from secondary schools, have been selected for training. They are expected to train the more than 60,000 teachers who will be handling the laptops and introducing them to the pupils.

The 60,000 teachers earmarked for training translates to three teachers for each of Kenya’s 20,000 public primary schools.

The Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) has digitized content in seven subjects for Class 1–3 and is currently piloting it in selected schools in readiness for the roll-out.

Success of the project however remains hinged on the government’s ability to connect the more than 8,000 schools that still do have electricity.

So far 11,065 schools have been hooked to the national electricity grid and Prof Kaimenyi said 1,650 more will be connected by January 2014.