WE have noted with alarm, continued reference to the previous Laptop Tender which suggests that Giftland OfficeMax bid was non-compliant.

The reasons given for this to the press and to Cabinet by Mr Sesh Sukhdeo was that they found our sample  of the Lenovo brand supplied not to be genuine.

Mr. Sukhdeo states that the local and regional Lenovo agents were not aware of our sample, which is true, and that he tried to contact our manufacturer and received no response. It would have been logical for Mr. Sukhdeo to ask for our assistance to communicate with our contracted manufacturer since they would not engage with a third party without our permission.

This is standard business practice.

No one would expect that an unauthorized person would be privy to information on a business transaction without permission from at least one of the parties involved in the transaction. We had arranged with the manufacturer to communicate with any government official we designated once we had advised them as to the identity of the person who would be contacting them.

It is surprising that anyone would think that they could contact a manufacturing company and assume that they would be able to enquire about a transaction to which they were not a party.

Also, we had to provide samples for the bid on very short notice and the normal manufacturing process had to be contracted to allow us to deliver to the government’s short notice.

In doing so, the laptop marking was less than ideal since a single sample manufacture is not the same as a full production run. It was under these circumstances that our marketing department made a slip-up in correcting this issue with the lettering.

All official documents provided refer to the world renowned brand name Lenovo. Giftland has performed its own due diligence on the integrity of the manufacturing company it has engaged and on the rights of this company to supply the specified Lenovo product.

If there was any doubt about this, then we should have been asked to provide supporting guarantees to that effect. We could also have arranged for the government official to meet our contracted manufacturer in Shenzhen, China if they felt this would assist in deciding on the authenticity of our product.

It is impossible to defend our bid if there are adverse claims made by bid officials without us having any opportunity to respond which, in turn, are reported in the press.

Since we were given no opportunity to assist with the verification of our bid submission, we respectfully enclose the Manufacturers Certificates and also Lenovo’s Authority production and sale of the said Lenovo, both in its original Chinese and the English translation, which emphatically refutes these aspirations on the integrity of Giftland OfficeMax.

It would be well to note that Giftland’s bid was in every way compliant with the Tender requirements and the only issue for which our bid was found noncompliant was the genuineness of the product itself, which it turns out is not an issue at all.

It is on this point that the Cabinet was misled into believing the information which was fed to it.
We have noted that the second Tender for supply of the Laptops also carries the same clause that the OLPF are not bound to accept any of the submitted bids. We wonder therefore, why if a Bid has reached all the requirements which is set forth in the Tender document and wins on its
own merit, that this clause exists, and kindly request explanation on this point, in order to clarify the transparency of the tender.

As you may be aware, the compilation and tendering for a bid of this magnitude is both complex and costly, for us.

We have already spent millions, invested substantial time and effort,
and have gone to great lengths to ensure that we are offering value for money.
The information supplied to the Cabinet to make its decision on the first Laptop Tender was flawed; we earnestly hope that greater scrutiny and clearer guidelines for the transparent evaluation of this important award is given for this project which it so truly deserves.