Germans win P120 million e-passport tender

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer | Friday November 14, 2008 00:00

 

But one of the companies, which lost the bid, AST Botswana, successfully challenged the award in 2005 at the High Court. The company had bid for P76 million. But since 2003, the cost of the project has escalated and the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board (PPDAB) awarded the job this week to a German company Giesecke and Devrient (G&D) for about P120 million.

Spokesperson in the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs, Lebogang Bok, says the contract between the Government of Botswana and the G&D company will be signed on the 24th November 2008 - MLHA Conference Room at 2pm.

Quizzed to say why the government has decided to award the tender to a foreign company this time around, the Ministry spokesperson told Mmegi that the initial passport project was a different project from this current one. 'It was a project of an ordinary machine readable passport. But the scope of the project was reviewed and changed to an e-passport which is a completely different project from the one you are referring to. There are very few companies in the whole world that deal with security documents such as e-passport and the capacity for undertaking such projects locally and even in Africa is a challenge', she said.

The multi-million Pula award comes at a time when Botswana has been warned by the UK and other European countries to improve its passport security features. Botswana passports' poor security features have resulted in easy forgeries by criminals. Government has announced measures to improve the security of the passports and said those who lose them will be fined P1,000 in addition to waiting six months to get a replacement.

The tender award announced early this week by the PPADB is in two parts. The first is for the design, supply and implementation of passport and border control system. The job involves the maintenance of the system for two years.

Press officer for the German company, Daniela Gaigi said they will reveal more details about the project later this week. The Munich-company has over 50 subsidiaries and joint ventures in all parts of the world.

It will produce a machine readable electronic passport for Botswana. In its website, it says the travel document and verification techniques and processes have made essential progress to enable the secure identification of travellers.

'The traditional passport, which allows visual identification, has been upgraded to a platform for electronic identification based on the passport holder's unique and unforgeable biometric features. This upgraded document is known as the electronic passport (e-passport), or electronic machine-readable travel document (eMRTD),' it says in the website.

The company was established in 1852 and initially specialised in banknote and securities printing. It later added automatic currency processing equipment to its product portfolio. Today, it is a leading supplier of smart cards and cutting-edge system solutions in the fields of telecommunications, electronic payments, transportation, health care, identity, customer loyalty, pay-TV, multimedia and Internet security (public key infrastructure).