Fresh controversy brews in Sri Lanka’s e-Passport project
Controversy is brewing in Sri Lanka’s e-Passport project after the presentation of the report on the country’s passport survey during the period of legal proceedings over the attempt made by the authorities to award the contract to De La Rue Lanka Currency and Security Print Ltd. (DeLaRue Lanka Ltd.) through a non-transparent and unsolicited single-source procurement process.
De La Rue Lanka Ltd has submitted its report titled “Sri Lanka Passport Survey” dated 26th January 2018, despite the order given by the Supreme Court on January 22 to maintain the ‘status quo’ of the project. The case will be taken up for hearing again on March 8.
An FR petition was filed before the Supreme Court by Epic Lanka (Pvt) Ltd challenging the decision to procure a system for issuing of e-Passports without following the applicable government tender guidelines and calling for open competitive tendering.
When this matter was taken up for support before the Supreme Court on January 22, Senior Deputy Solicitor General Viraj Dayarathna, appearing on behalf of the respondents gave an undertaking that the status quo as at that date would remain until this matter is supported for leave to proceed.
Department of Immigration and Emigration (DIE) sources confirmed that the Controller General of the Department has received the relevant report recently, and they are proceeding to study it for further action.
The Petitioner, EPIC Lanka (Pvt) Ltd is challenging the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers to award the Rs. 1.2 billion worth e-Passport project to De-La Rue Lanka Ltd. as a direct contract on the basis that the government has a 40 per cent stake, despite EPIC offering a similar solution for little over Rs. 185 million.
Disregarding the objections made by Minister S.B. Nawinna, who is in charge of the DIE, Minister Harin Fernando moved a Cabinet Paper in November, 2017 requesting approval to modify the previous cabinet approval dated 9th August 2017 to procure the e-Passports through the Swiss Challenge Method as advised by the President.
However it has sought Cabinet approval to award the contract to De La Rue Lanka under direct contracting method without following the Swiss Challenge process or any competitive bidding process, for which Cabinet approval had been granted previously.
In the Cabinet paper, Minister Harin Fernando informed that De La Rue Lanka has committed to invest over Rs.1.2 billion being the capital investment required to migrate the country from the current machine readable passport (MRP) system to a new e-Passport system.
The current passport supplier, Epic Lanka, submitting an unsolicited proposal, stated that the cost to migrate the country from the current MRP Passport to an ICAO standard e-Passport would be only Rs. 185 Million.
Epic Lanka also stated in its proposal that it would absorb this cost if the contract is awarded to them, thus the Government will not have to make any capital investment for the migration.
However, they proposed the Government to call for open tenders to procure the intended e-Passports.
However, it is alleged that, according to the Sri Lanka Passport Survey Report (dated 26th January 2018) De La Rue Lanka, will only provide a ‘centralised’ Passport Personalisation System with the capacity to personalise ‘one day process’ passports, which will be installed at the DIE head-office.
The Business Times reliably learnt that the report has also proposed to implement another similar personalisation system at the De La Rue Lanka facility at Biyagama to personalise and issue ‘normal process (10 days)’ passports.
The report further indicted that De La Rue Lanka has now ‘modified its initial recommendation’ to implement an end-to end system and thus will only provide an e-Passport Personalisation System, which will integrate with the existing infrastructure of DIE.
The survey report has clearly accepted the fact that the existing IT Infrastructure at DIE is sufficient and up-to-date to issue e-Passports.
This was a drastic turn by De La Rue Lanka as they initially convinced ICTA, DIE and Minister Harin Fernando that an end-to-end system for data capture, personalise and issue e-Passports should be implemented for Sri Lanka to migrate from current MRP Passports to e-Passports .
The Cabinet decided to award the E-Passport contract to De La Rue Lanka on the basis that it invests over Rs. 1.2 billion to set up an end-to-end system connecting 05 local immigration offices and 56 overseas missions.
However, now they are proposing to provide a system that will cost less than Rs. 50 million.
According to reliable information received from the DIE, De La Rue Lanka in its report has suggested to improve the quality and security levels of the passport by incorporating some features such as incorporating modern ‘thin-film’ laminate to protect the data page.
It was learnt from immigration sources that the current passport supplier was proposing DIE to change the current ‘thick-film laminate’ to ‘thin-film laminate’ since 2007 but DIE has not accepted this change due to financial constraints.