Indian supplier of SL liquor stickers gets digital ID card contract
Sri Lanka’s much delayed national-level digital identity card project finally appears to be moving forward two decades after its initiation in a fresh attempt of opening the procurement process to select a prospective supplier but it is raising some security concerns.
The aim is to re-issue national identity cards (NICs) to the whole adult population in the country and its by–product is the digital ID costing billions of rupees for its implementation, Finance Ministry sources said.
In February 2022, the Cabinet of Ministers approved a proposal by the Technology Ministry to obtain an INR 300 million grant from the Indian government to implement the ‘Unitary Digital Identity Framework’ in Sri Lanka, Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) sources revealed.
The total cost for the project is in the region of Rs. 41.05 billion. India has proposed a grant of Rs. 22.33 billion on the condition that this project is given to an Indian company.
“This is a general condition in most of these MOUs, from any country,” a senior ICTA official said adding that local companies are not required even to come as local agents or joint venture JV partners.
In Sri Lanka for the similar nature tenders {national ID, Driving License, e Passport) foreign companies cannot submit an offer without a JV partner who needs to provide Power of Attorneys registered in Sri Lanka, etc.
The concern here is that of national security as all data capturing of Sri Lankan citizens are entrusted with an Indian company for 2-3 years until a Sri Lanka company in the second stage takes over the maintenance.
Under this circumstance, India will have access to biometric data including facial features, family lineage, medical history, pharmaceutical usage, bank account details and more of every individual in Sri Lanka, several heads of local digital solutions and IT companies told the Business Times.
The tender process for only Indian companies for this project was initiated on May 8 this year, with the closing date set for July 3 and extended it to July and it was finally fixed to August 14 due to unknown reasons.
Only two Indian companies, namely Madras Security Printers and Protein Technologies had submitted tender bids by August 2,
Other companies refrained from participating due to the restrictive tender conditions that mandated accepting unlimited liability.
The Protein Technologies bid was rejected due to the absence of a foundational ID project. The decision has been taken to award the tender to Madras Security Printers which is currently supplying stickers for liquor bottles.
Several local liquor manufacturers noted that the quality of the samples of fool proof liquor stickers was not suitable for use in their high-speed machines.
SJB Matara District MP Buddhika Pathirana told Parliament this week that a tax scam where fake revenue stickers were pasted on bottles of alcohol to avoid paying tax was carried out with the assistance of senior officers of the Excise Department.
Under this set up the awarding of the digital NIC tender to this Indian company with bad track record will make matters worse for Sri Lanka as biometric information unique to any given person is likely to be passed on to the wrong hands, high tech and IT industry sources claimed.
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