A poll watchdog group on Saturday called on the Commission on Elections (Comelec) not only to scrap the UV (ultra-violet) lamp deal with OTC Paper Supply but also to penalize Smartmatic-TIM for their alleged error.

“Comelec shouldn’t be entering into any deals with firms already implicated in alleged overpriced contracts,” Bibeth Orteza, Kontra Daya convenor of the poll watchdog Kontra Daya.

The OTC Paper Supply was supposed to supply around 1.8 million ballot secrecy folders for the May 10 polls but the Comelec on Monday recalled the awarding of the P690 million contract to the company, saying it was “too extravagant beyond the ordinary needs of the commission.”

The problem with the UV marks, she said, is the responsibility of Smartmatic-TIM because they were the ones doing the printing of the ballots and acquiring the ink.

“If problems arose in the printing and the marks could not be read by the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines, it’s Smartmatic who should remedy the situation and if necessary, spend from their own pockets. Taxpayers shouldn’t be made to pay for the problems created by Smartmatic,” said Orteza.

“What adds insult to injury is that taxpayers will be paying for a contract with a firm already implicated in an earlier overpriced deal. It cannot be helped that this latest Comelec transaction will be viewed with suspicion,” she claimed.

Earlier it was reported that OTC was also the lowest calculated bidder for the UV lamp contract.

It was an official of the Consortium on Electoral Reforms (CER) who revealed the Comelec’s decision to shut off the UV ink readers of the PCOS machines after they allegedly failed to read many ballots during the laboratory tests last January.

Ramon Casiple, CER executive director, said the UV ink provided by Smartmatic-TIM “lacked the density” needed to be read by the machines. Due to this, the Comelec has decided to purchase some 76,000 portable UV mark readers in place of the automatic verification feature of the PCOS machines.