Govt must come clear on FODE project

Letters, Normal
Source:

The National, Thursday 11th April, 2013

 WE are a 100% nationally owned and managed printing company that has been providing various education materials to the national education de­partment through various AusAID-funded projects for years.

We strongly support pa­rents and students all over PNG who are calling for the resignation of the flexible open and distance education (FODE) prin­cipal and investigation into the project, especially on the non-delivery of student materials funded by the World Bank.

We are not surprised that after two years, since the announcement of the FODE project, course ma­terials have not been delivered.

In February 2011, we were approached by a stationery company which brought stacks of hard copy FODE student course materials for us to quote for simple scan and print jobs.

It claimed it won a contract through its newly-formed publishing company to supply these materials, but we have not heard from them since.

We learnt about the launch of the FODE pro­ject in the papers and sent our representative to at­tend it at the Gateway Hotel in May 2011.

After the launch, we emailed an expression of interest to the World Bank to print and supply the course materials for the FODE project.

We also expressed concern that we would not 

be given the business op­portunity by the educa­-tion department because of our stance against corruption, and thus, were ap­proaching the bank di­rectly.

The bank responded that any expression of in­terest must be sent directly to the education department and carbon copied it to a list of officials who were involved in the pro­ject.

However, the only response we received from one out of the six officials was that our expression of interest was noted and we never heard from them again even after attempted follow-ups.

We strongly believe that there was pre-arrangement and awarding of contracts prior to the launch.

Obviously, well-esta­blished, reputable and transparent companies with the capacity to deli­ver value for money pro­ducts and services, have been overlooked because otherwise, the materials would have been deli­vered on time.

Therefore, we urge the government to swiftly clear the air on this very important issue.

There has been so much secrecy surrounding the project and the public does not know what is going on, particularly the affected students, parents and guardians who have the right to know.

 

Sili Koriam

Via email