The Penang government have been very proud in admitting that they have successfully provided free WIFI to the state. This is being done by taking up advertisement in the Chinese local newspaper.
Hmm.. why not add the English/Malay newspapers one would say? after all its PUBLIC money that is being used to pay for this advertisements after all.
However, when SEDA put up a paid advertisement on the explanation on feed in tariff, the DAP leaders have started to foam from the mouth and condemn such effort as a waste of public money.
Why the double standard my esteemed Chinese DAP leaders?
Well, i have always talked about DAP's double standard (articles can be found in the archive of this blog). However, what i want to highlight today is the lies and scandal of the Penang Free Wi-Fi program.
The Penang government, who talks about "open tender" and transparency has NOT implemented its open tender policy in the awarding of a RM8.5 million ‘Free Wi-Fi’ contract. This is a classic class of a bloody hypocrite government, where in the previous election manifesto and promise was to practice open tender system on all state contracts.
However, this second Penang Free Wi-Fi project has in fact set a bad precedent for future projects. An open tender system was not offered for the second phase of the Wi-Fi project as the state government wanted a reputable company to lead the Phase 2 of this program.
Without open tender, and with a direct negotiation, REDtone was awarded the Penang Wifi Project. The explanation given by DAP is because this is due to the fact that REDtone International Bhd has willing to provide and maintain 750 free Wi-Fi hotspots in public areas in the state without any funding from the state government under the first phase.
Therefore, in phase 1 it was free, but in phase 2 the Penang government decided to go for a direct negotiation to ensure Redtone got their so called Return On Investment (ROI).
However, under phase two, the state government is paying RM8.49mil to install 750 free Wi-Fi hotspots over the next five years in Penang. How was this sum of RM 8.49 mil calculated? what was the basis?
The question is why state need to come in and paid RM8.49 million to installed 750 free Wi-Fi hotspots if at the first place such cost could be recovered by REDtone by selling their space for advertising in the hotspot?
Is has been Pakatan Rakyat and Lim Guan Eng promises to implement an open tender policy in all state contracts. Why didn't he do it for this free wifi hotspots?
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