The Chittagong Custom House and a private firm named Five-R Associates sent two separate rejoinders to our report titled “Scanning at Ctg Port: Govt settles for costlier option” published on May 3. We are publishing the unedited versions of the rejoinders along with our replies. 

FIVE-R ASSOCIATES REJOINDER

Regretfully, the article titled “scanning at port - Govt settles for costlier option -Private firm gets Tk 29cr a year for the job Custom House can do with Tk 4cr'' contains falsehood, innuendoes and omissions that is damaging to the reputation of our company.

Firstly, the article and the headline states that the contact value is “taka 28.86cr a year” whereas this value covers Operation and maintenance for two years.

Secondly, the contract for full operation and maintenance covers salaries of personnel including factory trained engineers, electricity and diesel fuel, spare parts for the entire period, connectivity, Bangladesh Atomic Energy costs and all other O&M charges. It is not known what costs were included in the purported Tk 4 cr quoted here without reference. Thus, the comparison is misleading and mischievous as it is not like with like.

Thirdly, the current contract price of taka 14.43 cr yearly compares very favorable to the taka 12.33 paid paid from 2008 to the previous service provider. It is to be notted that the reporter failed to mention that while the previous service provider was fully paid in converted foreign currency. 

Fourthly, it is surprising that the unnamed port source find source finds alleged security risk with a local operator while not having voiced security risk's during the tenure of the foreign company.

Lastly, to the best of our knowledge the previous service provider submitted a complaint and Appeal not to the Planning Commission but to the review panel, a quasi-judicial entity, who after hearing both sides rejected the Appeal thus negating any suggestion of irregularity or wrong doing.

OUR REPLIES

Firstly, we have rechecked all the facts and found that the firm will receive Tk 29 crore for its service for two years, and not for one year as we wrongly mentioned in our report.

We regret this error.

Secondly, true that our report did not mention what expenses the Five-R Associates will cover with the Tk 29 crore (for two years), we clearly mentioned that in a draft proposal, the Chittagong Custom House said the scanning job can be done with about Tk 4 crore by establishing a permanent scanning department.

Thirdly, we did not make any comparison between the contract values of the SGS and the Five-R Associates. We only mentioned as a matter of fact that the SGS, the previous contractor, charged Tk 12.33 crore a year. Also, we used all figures in local currency. So we did not think it was necessary to mention that the SGS was paid in converted foreign currency, as the Five-R Associates says in its rejoinder.

Fourthly, The Daily Star did not make any assumption about the potential risk of handling the scanners by one private firm or the other. The paper only reported what officials told us and we could not name them because they sought anonymity. The CCH draft also said that if the scanning operations are handled by the CCH, it will be possible “to prevent imports of explosives and other items that might threaten national security.”

Lastly, we clearly mentioned that the Planning Commission did not entertain the SGS complaint about alleged irregularities in the tender process and that it cleared the CCH move to hire Five-R Associates for the job.

CHITTAGONG CUSTOM HOUSE REJOINDER

This is to clarify that the News Headline “scanning at port - Govt settles for costlier option -Private firm gets Tk 29cr a year for the job Custom House can do with Tk 4cr'' published in the Daily Star on May 3 was wrong misinterpreted. The procurement of scanning  at CTG port was made in competitive open tender  manner. The CPTU has already rejected all the complaints lodged by SGS. The complainant, SGS, already withdrew all the allegation from Anti-Corruption as well.