- But Botswana Police Service seems keen to have specific companies appointed
According to documents made available to this publication, late last year the PPADB upheld a complaint by a company identified as Chaplain Solutions (Pty) Ltd regarding the tender for supply, delivery, installation, configuration and commissioning of additional cameras and an LTE system to the existing safer city for Botswana police services.
The documents also show another company identified as VTM Security (Pty) Ltd, which had submitted a bid for the same project, also submitted a complaint on 26 October about the same issues that Chaplain Solutions had raised. PPADB states that a decision was then taken to cancel Tender No. 5/2/1(II) on the basis that the IT was flawed. The decision by the PPADB to cancel this tender comes hot on the heels of another tender (Tender No. 0/5/2-1-1) related to the same safer city project (worth P300 million), which PPADB rejected twice in a row last year.
PPADB had rejected Tender No. 0/5/2-1-1) for direct appointment of Huawei Technologies Botswana, ICT Dynamix and Hiwing Mechanical Technologies by the BPS. This tender was submitted by BPS on 12 July 2021 but was not approved. A second attempt was made by BBS when it also re-submitted the same tender for the supply, delivery, installation, configuration and commissioning of additional cameras and an LTE system to the existing safer city solutions for Botswana police.
PPADB still did not approve the tender. Instead, it withdrew and set aside approval for the direct appointment of Huawei and ICT Dynamix for the same tender and instructed BPS to “to submit an appropriate request before the Board to progress procurement”. But by submitting an appropriate request, PPADB was referring to an open tender rather than the direct appointment method that the BPS has sought. Among other things, the safer city project entails installation of a closed circuit television surveillance system and it ranks high among development initiatives of Botswana Police Service
Reports indicate that thus far, surveillance capability has been deployed in Gaborone and plans are at an advanced stage to extend it to Francistown. It is understood that PPADB wants an estimated P160 million out of P300 million to be subcontracted to citizen owned companies. Unconfirmed reports say BPS had wanted to stick to Huawei and other subcontractors by adopting the direct appointment method for “purposes of continuity.”
