Attorney General Anil Nandlall SC has justified government’s sole-sourcing of the US$34 million e-ID project contending that the sensitivity of the data it would contain requires world class security features from trusted companies and an “open market” opens the floodgates to data being compromised.
And like the same sole-sourcing process that is triggered under the national security clause of the Procurement Act when procuring passports here, government saw the e-ID data as a sensitive issue and a matter of national security.
“Briefly, on that procurement of the resident card, that contract was single sourced. These are not contracts that can go to open tendering. They involve matters of national security. They involve national documents that require protective mechanisms that you can’t go on the open market to compete for,” Nandlall on Tuesday evening said on his “Issues in the News” programme where he spoke on a number of issues.