Security concern on passport production

The Mole's recent posting [read here] of Deputy Home Minister Dato Nurjazlan Mohamed commenting that government will not allow Malaysian passport be made in China made us re-look our posting on the same issue [read here].

To partly answer the question as to who is to blame, MMO dated August 8th reported Jazlan slamming "the company responsible for supplying passports to the Immigration Department — Datasonic ..."

Their contract was to begin December 1st and Iris contract expired in June.

How could Home Ministry allow the period between the end of a contract and the beginning of a new contract a gap of almost 6 months?

In The Star report dated August 4th, Datasonic used that excuse to claim "they are not the current principal supplier of the Malaysian passport booklets and chips to the Home Ministry but supplies polycarbonate data pages with chips to the Government."

They claim they are the subcontractor to Percetakan Keselamatan Nasional to imbed chip into the polycarbonate page of the passport.

The chips came from Trub AG Switzerland and reject rate very low. The report has various figures of production.

Since the company offered to supply the passports earlier to “familiarise themselves with the system” and “to build a stockpile of passports”, Nurjazlan is right to ask, as reported by MMO: "Why did they offer when they were not prepared to do so?"

Datasonic claim that the shortage were due to 6-days raya vacation at PKN does not make sense. If there is an order, PKN would have built up a stockpile before going off for Raya.

Has PKN been slacking now that their contract is only an extension for June 1st to Nov 30th? Or Datasonic passing the blame?

The company usually give this statement to Bursa:

"The contract is subject to normal business risks such as increase in cost due to any escalation of material costs and contractual terms including default provisions. As such, the management would put in place control measures and operational procedures to reduce the impact or likelihood of such events."

With markets very volatile these days, who can do anything about say, currency fluctuation?

Monopoly

In The Star report dated December 15th, 2015, Datasonic informed Bursa Malaysia that they were awarded 5 year contract from December 2016 to November 30 2021 to supply Malaysian passport chips.

The same report highlighted that Datasonic "secured a five-year contract through an open tender to supply 10 million new passport polycarbonate datapages with laser engraving personalisation equipment to the Immigration Department from February 2013 to January 2018".

MMO reported that "Effective December 1, Datasonic will take over PKN’s role as the main contractor by printing and supplying passports to the department."

It seemed The Star reported on April 27th 2016 that Datasonic "secured a RM223.38mil deal from the Home Affairs Ministry to supply Malaysian passport documents over the same five-year period starting Dec 1, 2016, or 13.416 million units."

Isn't it worrisome that one company control the whole integrated process of supplying the passport, chip and chip-imbedded polycarbonate page, database and customising of the passport?

Do we not have local chip producer and at cheaper price? Heard we have ...

It reminded us of companies being awarded contract to print CD, VCD, DVD and etc. under license from foreign companies holding the rights.

While they manufactured under contract, at the same time, for every one original, it was said these companies manufactured and distributed ten fake at cheaper price.

Can the same happen here?

More worrisome, Datasonic is also the supply for raw polycarbonate MyKad from 2014 to 2016. In May they were awarded RM206 million contract to supply 12 million cards.

Every official identity documents of the countries is basically supplied by one company. Isn't that scary and a security nightmare?

These are publicly available news. Sue the newspaper if all these are wrong.

What were the officials at Home Ministry doing? Whose Ministry is responsible for security?

Or will the blame go to official at Ministry of Finance?

It is heard that a CEO of a company involved in a tender could be present in a Tender Board meeting and be given room to rubbish his competitor. He is not at fault but what is the official doing?

BN could lose more middle class votes if government officials continue to behave and act this way.