KUWAIT CITY, July 11: A senior official at the Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW), who reportedly has a say in matters related to awarding contracts, allegedly qualified a private Korean transformer manufacturing firm despite the fact that its transformers do not conform to international specifications, reports Al-Shahid daily. He allegedly took the step to satisfy the Korean firm’s agent who holds a key position in the oil sector and handed him the contracts for installation, importing and maintenance of these Korean transformers.
Sources say the official and his team secretly executed the operation of qualifying the firm. Reportedly, the official got all the paper work done and sent the final document to a former acting undersecretary to get his signature.

Sources say the latter was shocked, but under intense pressure from the official and his deputies, he gave in and signed the contract without sending it to the Central Tenders Committee (CTC). Sources say it is strange that a technical committee was not formed to study the company’s capability and that the official got the papers processed so quickly without referring to anybody or showing them to specialized authorities. The 21,000 Watt transformers do not adhere to international standards, say sources, adding the company the ministry hired will repeat the same mistakes and the country will face the same problems that it faced earlier due to substandard transformers and lack of expertise in this technical field.