IMANI: EC Entangled In A US$150M Lies Over New Biometric Register

Policy think tank, IMANI, has made revelations about the Electoral Commission’s agenda to procure a new biometric register that indicates shocking corruption and reckless splurging.

According to the think tank, the Jean Mensah-led EC has all along been lying when it claimed that it would cost more to refurbish the existing biometric system than to procure a new one.

Contrary to this same claim by the EC, IMANI has revealed that the EC would end up spending a stupefying US$150million to procure the new biometric system instead of the US$56million that the EC has bundied about.

Even more brow-raising, the think tank reports that if the EC were to decide to rather refurbish the existing biometric system, rather than purchase a new one, it would cost the election umpire just 15million.

“The EC’s claims that it will cost just $56 million to procure a new system whilst the cost of refreshing and maintaining the existing one would cost $74 million are untruths

“Compared to a limited registration to capture just those not on the voters’ register, a fresh mass registration shall cost $50 million. Refreshing the existing technology at competitive prices will cost just about $15 million. Hence the total loss to Ghana of the EC’s actions amount to $150 million, if one factors in contingency. If the fact that thousands of perfectly good equipment shall be thrown away is also considered, the total loss rises,” a letter written by Franklin Cudjoe, President of IMANI, pointed out.

The revelation is coming les than two weeks after the opposition National Democratic Congress similarly revealed at a press conference that it has contacted the companies which set up the existing biometric system and found out that the systems are not obsolete as the EC claims.

According to the NDC, the expert companies involved had also revealed that they had offered to help the EC to update the existing system at a far lesser cost but the EC had rejected their help.

It would be recalled that the NDC had also hinted that the tender process that yielded for the EC, the company that it has settled on to carry out the new biometric system for it was fraught with corruption and that the company involved is a rogue firm which has already been blacklisted in Ghana.

IMANI speaks in similar tone about the tendering process. “But economic cost is not the only thing to be worried about. The EC also bungled the procurement process, leaving a trail of evidence suggesting tender-rigging. This has opened the process to litigation and delay. 

“The EC used one day to disqualify well-qualified bidders, claiming that they had reputational problems. 

“The EC’s tender processes were so bad that the Chairman of the technical evaluation panel dissociated himself from the results forcing the EC to discard a 4-month process and compress it into a one-week evaluation. The company on whose behalf the tender was being manipulated is the only one whose score tally doesn’t add up. The EC insists that you must accept that 85 + 13 = 104 instead of 98.”

IMANI also makes the point that the EC has unnecessarily shoehorned itself into a tight and unrealistic timeframe that is very likely not to be met as far as completing the new register for the 2020 polls is concerned.

“At any rate, the timeframe for negotiating a proper contract; designing better specifications to correct the many things the EC claims are wrong with the existing system; securing procurement approvals; integrating disparate software and hardware systems from different vendors; and deploying and testing the platform cannot be fitted within the EC’s artificial timeline of April 18th, 2020 for the commencement of registration. 

“The proposed mediation process by Gamey & Co Alternate Dispute Resolution Center is wise and must be considered by all parties.”