Korean firm wins poll modernization project

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has awarded the contract for the procurement of devices to modernize next year’s election to a Korean company.

Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos said that the poll body gave the contract to Mega Pacific, which has pledged to provide 1,700 units of counting machines worth P1.27 billion. The machines, he said, will be enough to cover all precincts nationwide.

With the same budget, its nearest rival, Total Information Management (TIM), an American firm, could only manage to provide counting machines for Metro Manila and Mindanao.

Abalos said the bidding was concluded only last April 15 as the technical evaluation of the machines offered by the competing companies by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) also took time.

"The counting machines that will be procured will include both fast and slow counting machines, which will be placed in areas with large number of registered voters and less congested areas, respectively," Abalos said.

Areas with at least 30,000 to 35,000 registered voters are considered "congested areas" while areas with at least 15,000 registered voters are considered "less congested," he said.

The fast counting machines have the capacity to accurately process 100 ballots per minute while the slow counting machines could take in 40 ballots per minute.

Abalos said that through the equipment, the counting of votes may only take five hours at the municipal level.

Meanwhile, contracts for the procurement of the voters validation machines and electronic transmission system were awarded early this month.

Sagem has been contracted for the voters validation machines while Philippine Multi-Media Systems Inc. (PMMSI) won the bid for the electronic transmission system.

Sagem won over Unisys while PMMSI won over Mega Pacific on the bidding for these two election modernization projects of the government.

Sagem and Unisys were part of the consortium of Photokina Marketing Corp., which was supposed to undertake the aborted deal on the Voters Registration Information System (VRIS).

The government earmarked P1.7 billion for the procurement of the counting machines, P1 billion for the voters validation machines, and P300 million for the electronic transmission system.

Abalos told The STAR that the voters validating machines are set to arrive in July. As such, the suspension of the continuing registration of voters will be lifted in the same month.

The validating machines will also be used in the registration of qualified voters in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and in four other municipalities and provinces where records of registration were either burned or destroyed.