Source: Post Courier

The Opposition is calling on the Prime Minister to confirm whether his Planning Minister has announced a government decision to award the job of establishing the much talked-about biometric database system to a named Chinese company.
Opposition spokesman Francis Potape said they were not aware of any NEC decision to award the contract to the named company.
He said the Opposition was also not aware of any public tender put out for the job, nor indeed of any decision by the CSTB to recommend to NEC to award the contract.

“If the Minister has prematurely pre-empted decisions of the CSTB and the NEC, he should be disciplined,” he said.

The Opposition had warned the government to be extremely careful with what company it engages to undertake the installation of the biometric network as the security of citizens and private information was of paramount importance.

“The system must be the very best the world has to offer in terms of its reliability, durability, and security of all information stored.”

Mr Potape said the Opposition was apprehensive about a Chinese company doing it as there are no democratic elections in that country.Therefore, whether they have sufficient knowledge of democratic processes to be accounted for in the system, was a serious question.

They were also worried about the reliability of a Chinese-made biometric system.
The Opposition was aware of more secure and reliable systems available in the USA and Europe which are proven and used around the world. Some of these systems have been brought into the country and have, on a number of occassions, presented in demonstrations for the Electoral Commission and government officials.

The Opposition calls on the government to be very thorough with the procurement process as the biometric system is a national tranformational instrument in which the data or information stored for each registered person in this country will be multipurpose.

Proper public tender must be called so that PNG can have the benefit of securing the best possible system and technology for our country, so that we all can be proud of it.