Ksu To Be Removed For Keluarga Malaysia S Tablet Supply Retender

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Facebooker Mazita Na defended Prime Minister's Principal Private Secretary, Dato Nazimah against recycle allegations made against her yesterday. When it first broke out, one defense put forth by a FBer was to claim her wearing Zhulian fake jewellery. 
Since BN returned to the PMship, the exploits of Ministers' private secretaries became the conversation on the political grapevine. Old rumour of Minister's private secretary charging toll for appointment is making its rounds again. This time a son-in-law's mother is thrown in the same boat albeit at a premium.
There is the occasion a private secretary could set the Minister's itinerary at a moment notice. Since it is not a viable arrangement, the reception turned out to be less than desired. The ex-officio got called back to head office and sent to "cold storage". It turned out to be for a meeting not a government matter in which the outcome is a major controversy in the financial circle. 
A recent whispering claimed a Ministry Secretary General (KSU) may get the boot out for not seceding to a private secretary request with regard to a government tender. Not sure which Ministry and who is the private secretary, but this differ from the commonly heard talk of KSUs not playing ball to Minister's request. 

Retender is a business usual happening in Malaysia's mysterious government procurement game. Its really difficult to pinpoint KSU, but a Little Bird in the IT industry have been talking of a retender for the simple tender to supply tablets for PRSIS program.
PRSIS tender

PRSIS is the acronym for PerantiSiswa Keluarga Malaysia. It is a program announced in Budget 2022 tabled last year meant to provide computer tablets for qualified students at institutes for higher learning. Application opened on April 15th 2022 and more info available on MoF page here.
The budget is expected to be sizeable. According to Tengku Zafrul during the budget presentation, some 350,000 students will benefit from this Keluarga Malaysia program. The Higher education Ministry claim it will benefit 600,000 students. 
That is potential votes from new voters for the ruling party, in which the beneficiary is not sure to whether it is BN or PN. 
On the other hand, big budget usually attracts many interested parties There will be increased competition, intense lobby and suspiciously kickbacks too. This is merely speculating it will to happen in the PRSIS tender.  
Tender opened on February 23rd. Forms distributed from the same date till the 28th and tender closed on March 14th, about last month. The condition is the tender is good for 180 days after closing date.   
By end of March, the tender result was finalised. The Tender Board (or Lembaga Perolehan (LP)) for the Ministry for Communication and Multimedia (KKMM) made their recommendation to the Ministry of Finance (MOF) for final endorsement. 
This is a Projek untuk Rakyat or peoples' well being project and the LP team stick closely to the procedure to ensure it meet the criteria for the lowest price and best support and services. 
Suddenly, market is the tender will be retendered in mid-May, about next week. Instead of being handled by KKMM, MOF will be handling the tender themselves. 
The tender participants were puzzled. This is a straight forward tender in which the criteria for consideration is no rocket science or not complex in its requirements. Neither it is the first type of such tender. The Little Bird smelled a rat, went snooping and shared her finding. 
Apparently, there is a wahyu (instruction from the Gods) to recommend the award to another company. The problem in satisfying that request is that it will cost more per unit cost by RM140. That translate to a total difference of RM49 million for this particularly tender. 
Any smart crook will not do that. Let alone a straight officer at MOF. Despite the rumours about Tengku Zafrul, there are still honest officers at MOF. 
More so, this is a hot project and to buy a product of the same brand and same specification at a significantly higher price is suicidal. MACC could come in and close their case faster than the one week it took to investigate Syed Saddiq for money laundering party money in his personal safe. 
If caught, it will backfire badly on KKMM's LP and MOF. So it explains for the retender being handled by MOF.  
Acting in such gung ho manner without thinking of the downside implication seemed to be the trademark of the rumoured private secretaries. This is not in any way accusing Dato Rubiayah Abdul Rahman of directing the LP to change their tender recommendation.  
Weststart or Weststar?    
According to Little Bird, someone did acted on behalf of the Minister or probably only the Minister's office to order the KSU and LP to alter the tender result in order to award to a company mentioned as Weststart. There is no such company found on Google except perhaps West Star and the group has a subsidiary, Weststar Engineering involved in IT. 
West Star is the controversial company implicated in Rafidah Aziz car AP scandal in which since becoming pro-opposition, DAP stop picking on her and Kit Siang even visited her for Hari Raya. More checking needed to confirm Weststar participation in the tender.     
If it is retendered by MOF, the self-interest parties within KKMM can only be expected to be terribly sore and bitter. This is easy money. 
Should the parties are in the position of power, there will be effort to remove the KSU. Just wait and see whether Ministry's KSU Dato Seri Mohamed bin Mentek will be transfered to the JPA pool like what almost happened to the ambassador and Wisma Putera officers. 
Since PH and PN government, the frequent change of Ministers secretaries or transfering of KSU is rampant. Maszlee changed political secretaries at least five times. Insider information on government were so accessible because Ministers imposed their will and strong armed high level government officers. 
Deja Vu
It is a surprise for any BN Minister to repeat the same foolish mistake. Voters will think BN never learned their lesson. 
Even if Annuar Musa is not involved, he will could be implicated because the perception is he has a tarnished reputation nearly almost all the government agencies and Ministries he was involved before. It better not happen under his watch.      
KKMM is a gold mine and the KSU will be seen to be in the way because the self interest parties can't force or control the working level in their favour to influence result and make them win tender looking as though it is fair and square. 
The self interest group seemed to be quite resourceful for managing to got hold of the LP recommendation to MOF. It must be from an office with access to all matters relating to Keluarga Malaysia programs including financial matter. 
There are two high flying mamaks mentioned by an enforcement agency insider whose names are being bandied about as actively fixing tenders. They could end up implicating a certain high profile politician. Without proof, will say no more.  
Nevertheless, what is it about government program to supply notebook and tablet. In 2010, there was a big hoo haa in the blogosphere on the 1Malaysia Notebook program under Rais Yatim. There was the attention on Muhyiddin's RM5 billion 1 Computera 1 Student project 2014 in 2013.   
And now it is PRSIS!   

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