Deliveries of Thailand’s one tablet per child tablet have only just begun, but the $32.8 million (1.02 billion baht) project is already facing formal scrutiny from an anti-corruption watchdog for irregularities in the procurement.
A leaked letter from the office of the comptroller-general to the ICT and Education Ministries identified a series of irregularities.
Certain individuals were on both the TOR drafting committee and the acceptance committee, which is against government procurement regulations.
The TOR was between the ICT ministry and the Chinese manufacturer, but the acceptance committee was from the Ministry of Education, not MICT.
The acceptance committee accepted the tablets even with certain issues unresolved: The TOR called for a protective screen and a padded case, neither of which were provided; a requirement for an earthed power brick was ignored with a 2-prong power brick supplied and the educational software on the tablet was ad-ware with lots of banner ads embedded in the educational content.
The letter, leaked on opposition Democrat Party deputy-leader Korn Chartikavanij’s Facebook page, called only for relevant documents to be submitted to the office of the comptroller-general at this stage.
Earlier, irregularities emerged that saw the TOR change between the end of the bidding and the signing with Schenzhen Scope. A clause for fortified Gorilla glass was removed (in favour of the screen protector which was not supplied), the number of units was reduced from one million in 56 days down to 400,000 and the G2G contract was turned into a normal procurement only after non-Chinese vendors were excluded from the bidding process.