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NT unions blast NGN contract award to ZTE Corp China
KATHMANDU, AUG 08 -
Unions at Nepal Telecom (NT) have objected to the management’s decision to award the contract for supplying equipment to install the next generation
network (NGN) to ZTE Corporation China.
They have accused the management of giving the contract to ZTE instead of punishing it for not completing the project to add 3.5 million subscribers as per the agreement reached between the two parties three years ago. The NT board had recently decided to award the US$ 19 million NGN project to ZTE and Huawei of China on a package basis. According to the NT board, it decided
to award the contract to
ZTE as it had quoted the lowest price.
Huawei was the second lowest bidder with US$ 22 million. Under the package, ZTE will install the NGN in the Kathmandu Valley while Huawei will do it in other places of the country. “Nepal Telecom has failed to distribute SIM cards as planned due to the delay in work by ZTE,” said Saroj Kumar Dhungana, president of the Nepal Telecom Employees Union. “Despite this fact, the management has decided to award the NGN contract to ZTE. This is against the interest of the company.”
“The main problem is low price and the management awards the contract to the lowest bidder without keeping in mind the future consequences,” said Krishna Hari Khatiwada, president of the Nepal Telecom National Employees Organization. “Nepal Telecom has always failed to be a commercial company following political interference in each decision.” In the global tender for the NGN project, 10 international firms had proposed to supply equipments for the NGN.
However, only four proposals -- ZTE, Huawei, Nokia Siemens and UTSTAR -- were studied by the evaluation committee. UTSTAR and Nokia Siemens had proposed to supply NGN equipment for US$ 25 million and US$ 31 million respectively.
Manil Ojha, president of Nepal Telecom Workers Union, said that awarding the contract to ZTE had been preset by the management as it had already provided the satisfactory performance certificate to ZTE without the completion of the 3.5 million SIM expansion project and good performance.
“Ill practices in the management, Public Procurement Act and lack of separate technical and financial evaluation are the major problems that Nepal Telecom is going through,” said Ojha. “ZTE is being awarded with new projects one after another despite its dismal track record.”
ZTE, China’s second largest technology company, has been supplying telecom equipment to NT as well
as Ncell.
Posted on: 2010-08-09 07:59
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