Hanky-Panky & Foul Play in Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) Tender Process

Published at 12:04 AM in Business

By LILIAN ANN STRUTT

KUALA LUMPUR - So goes the title of an anonymous email sent to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and all Telekom Malaysia Bhd directors. The email referred to a RM66 million contract and allegations of irregularities in its tender and purchase of content caching equipment for Internet business.

According to a TM spokesman, investigations will be conducted on the matter as it was important to defend the integrity of the tender obtaining process.

Speaking through an email response to The Malaysian Insider, the TM spokesman said "TM is fully committed to a fair and transparent procurement policy and adheres to current best practices. We have very strict and thorough procurement processes that involve technical assessment of the proposed solutions, which usually includes several stages in labs and network environments.

“Such processes have been applied to the tender in question, and all vendors have been given a fair evaluation. All stages in the process are documented and supervised according to TM Governance policies,” the spokesman added.

The anonymous emailer claimed that there was dishonesty involved in the tender processes of TM. Using the pseudonym 1Malaysia Citizen, the complainant claimed that TM issued a tender on December 9, 2009 for the content caching solution which was later awarded to Alunan Persada Sdn Bhd for a solution “from BlueCoat for the value of RM 66,472,014.00 for 6 years including of 1 year guarantee and 5 year maintenance”.

1Malaysia Citizen also included extract of board minutes and decision and claimed that despite the inferior and failures in the solution, the tender was still awarded to Alunan.