By GORETHY KENNETH

THE government may have breached an agreement with a PNG company when it went ahead to engage a foreign company to introduce a biometric system in time for the 2017 national election. 

The govt has engaged an international company from China to set up the biometrics system to prepare for the 2017 elections.

There is already a homegrown company SkyCo, which had developed the system over nine years and is now ready to implement the program for PNG if given the go ahead. The system is running concurrently by 3M Cogent programs, which is widely used in America and Europe.

The Govt had breached an earlier agreement with a local company SkyCo which had developed the biometrics system in the country for nine years and was engaged in 2009 to implement the system. It is also alleged that the foreign company engaged has been widely criticised as they posed a national security threat to PNG.

It is understood the O’Neill-Dion Government ignored advice and went ahead with a Chinese-funded ICT infrastructure rollout program which is now heavily tipped to carry out the biometrics program for 2017.

Chairman and MD of SkyCo Pastor Joe Kile told the ‘Post-Courier’ on Friday that PNG should seriously look into its’ own nationally-owned companies who can do the work instead of spending so much money on outsiders.

“The system we are offering has been researched, written, designed, built, tested and integrated in total compliance to our current existing LPV and Absolute Majority election laws, customised to the PNG context, tested in PNG, demonstrated in PNG and showcased in PNG at the request of the PNG Electoral Commission in 2009 and 2010 and in July 2011 at the National Parliament,” Pastor Kile said.

“Before the 2012 national election, we approached the Prime Minister with a view to be engaged by the government to help prepare and conduct the election with the application of our system. We were ready to set up our equipment and system at every polling booth across the country and do a real-time biometric based voter registration and voting on the same day.”

“Why is PNG looking abroad when we are already here at its footsteps? We are not asking for much. Our proposal was only K350 million, the others will come in with more and besides, the company engaged has advised they will use our system,” he said.