Comelec: Refurbishing 80K PCOS machines presents savings, cost advantages

Refurbishing over 80,000 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines for P2.07 billion is the most cost effective option the Commission on Elections said it has for the automated election system it needs for the 2016 elections.

 

“With the refurbishment, we see a big difference in the price. So we feel that the refurbishment is still the most advantageous for the government in terms of the savings, in costs,” Comelec Commissioner Christian Robert Lim said on Friday.

 

Lim is the chairman of the poll body's steering committee for the 2016 elections.

 

Leasing 70,977 Optical Mark Reader (OMR) units with option to purchase, the Comelec said, would cost P7.8 billion and leasing 23,000 voting machines sums up to P2.5 billion.

 

Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista said they are considering all three alternatives: repair of old PCOS units plus 23,000 new OMR units; all new OMR units by adding the 23,000 and the 70,977 units; and the hybrid option former Comelec commissioner Gus Lagman's group has presented.

 

The second Special Bids and Awards Committee announced the failure of bidding for refurbishing 81,896 old PCOS units. There were no interested bidders.

 

Smartmatic – Total Information Management (TIM) Corporation, Indra Sistemas S.A., and Vertex Business Applications, Inc. bought bid documents but no bid proposals came from any of them.

  

Commissioner Lim said the steering committee may confer with the three prospective bidders on Monday. 

 

“We are going to have a non-binding conference with the proposed bidders on Monday to discuss the appropriate ABC (approved budget for the contract),” he said.  — ELR, GMA News