spot_img
27.6 C
Philippines
Friday, March 29, 2024

Vote counters to arrive Dec

- Advertisement -

The Smartmatic-Total Information Management Corp. consortium assured the public it will be able to deliver another 21,000 Optical Mark Reader machines by the end of December, its official said on Friday.

Contrary to previous reports, Smartmatic Philippines project manager Marlon Garcia said that by mid-January, there will be a total of 51,040 machines that will be used for the national and local election on May 9, 2016.

Smartmatic Philippines project manager Marlon Garcia

He also assured that by March, Smartmatic-TIM will be able to ship to Manila the remaining 40,343 OMRs from their factory in Taiwan.

“We are confident that we will be able to produce the 91,383 OMRs two months before the 2016 May elections,” Garcia said in a phone interview, reacting to reports that there will be only 40 machines available by January.

He said that so far they have delivered 40 machines during the first week of November to be used for voter education.

- Advertisement -

“There are a total of 40 machines that have been delivered to date. These will be mostly used for voter education,” he said.

Commission on Elections Commissioner Christian Robert Lim recently said five vote counting machines arrived in the country last Oct. 2 and another 34 units in early November.

The senior commissioner also said that the warehouse in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, where the machines will be stored, is expected to be fully functional by mid-January.

Aside from using the warehouse as storage, he said it will also have a separate room called “memory configuration room” where they will store all the SD cards, among others.

The Laguna warehouse has an area of 48,000 square meters and will be leased for one year for P69 million.

On Thursday, the Comelec announced that Smartmatic-TIM won the contract to supply the electronic transmission gadgets, worth P507 million, for next year’s election. 

According to the Comelec, Smartmatic should complete the transmission of the election results within 24 hours from the time voting closes in each of the clustered precincts.

The ERTS is the system used in the city/municipal, provincial, and national canvassing centers to send and receive transmitted results of voting.

Other companies which joined the bidding were Ezcom Telecommunications Service and Solutions Corp.; Edgecomm Inc.; and SOG Philippines Inc.

The Comelec was able to opt for a negotiated bid since it failed to find an adequate service provider after two public biddings.

Republic Act No. 9148 provides that the negotiated procurement method, wherein the Procuring Entity directly negotiates a contract with a technically, legally, and financially capable supplier, is allowed in case of two failed public biddings.

In the 2013 elections, the Smartmatic-TIM was only able to  achieve a 75 percent transmission rate even when the poll body  had  already proclaimed  the election winners.

- Advertisement -

LATEST NEWS

Popular Articles