NACC probe sought into DES Minister and others over ‘TH-AI Passport’ project
The opposition People’s Party MP Rukchanok Srinork submitted evidence to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) today, demanding an investigation into the conduct of Minister of Digital Economy and Society (DES) Chaichanok Chidchob and four other individuals in connection with the 1.6 billion baht ‘TH-AI Passport’ project.
The other individuals named by Rukchanok are Patchara Anuntasilpa, the DES permanent secretary, Wetang Phuangsup, secretary general of the the National Board of Digital Economy and Society Office (BDE), “Thirawut”, chair of committee tasked with drafting the terms of reference (TOR) for the project, and “Pruetikwan”, representative of the Human Intelligence Company.
TH Consortium, which comprises Turnkey Communication Services Plc and Human Intelligence Co., Ltd. won the bid to implement the project.
In the complaint filed with the NACC, the outspoken opposition MP accused Chaichanok of dereliction of duty of failing to stop the bidding process or to scrap the project, which will cost the taxpayer about 1.6 billion baht.
She alleges that the TOR was tailor-made to make it impossible for most companies to participate in the bidding, citing one of the conditions in the TOR which specifies that a bidder must have at least 400 publicity billboards installed across the country and no less than 6,000 monitors in at least 1,500 convenience stores.
With such a condition, she said that only a handful of companies were qualified to compete in the bidding for the project. She also claimed that there are only about 100,000 active users of the ‘TH-AI Passport’ service, out of about 1.3 million who applied to use it.
Based on the DES ministry’s estimate of the overheads for the service at 25 baht per user and only 100,000 active users, she noted that the budget for the project should have been 2.4 million baht instead of 1.6 billion.
She repeated the People’s Party’s call for the project to be scrapped, the TOR to be redrafted and a new round of bidding to be called.