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BMA hard disk purchase again scrutinized
Tanatpong Kongsai
The Nation



BANGKOK Metropolitan Administration deputy governor Amorn Kitchawengkul on Monday said a previous probe had already cleared the city over the allegedly inflated price of the four-terrabyte hard disks used in its closed-circuit TV cameras.

The purchase price was included in a six-page document that was published on the Internet, where it received much criticism.

Amorn said the document was release to find a bidder for the maintenance of the cameras and the prices of items used to the cameras were cited because the maintenance cost would be no more than 11 per cent of that cost.

He said the maintenance budget for the six items, which also includes fibre optic cables, was set at Bt22 million per year and was a legitimate expense according to civil service procedures.

Amorn said the four-terrabyte hard disks, worth Bt800,000 per unit, were bought in 2010.

The government probe into the procurement was conducted by a sub-panel assigned by Parliament, he said, adding that probes were also conducted by the Office of the Auditor General, the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the Department of Special Investigation.

As the external hard disks were for the specialised storage area network system, the prices differed from those used in general, he added.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/BMA-hard-disk-purchase-again-scrutinised-30267851.html


-- The Nation 2015-09-01

[davehowden]

"As the external hard disks were for the specialised storage area network system"

Like fuzzy pictures of bombers?

Edited August 31, 2015 by davehowden

[ukrules]

Laughable.

[peterjackson]

The government probe into the procurement was conducted by a sub-panel assigned by Parliament, he said, adding that probes were also conducted by the Office of the Auditor General, the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the Department of Special Investigation.

In that case, someone should be looking at the above departments too, as they are clearly incompetent in rooting out corruption.

I do agree, HD devices used for CCTV are more specialist than standard commercial HD's. I purchased two 4TB CCTV/AV spec. HD's three years ago for a RAID archive system for our complex CCTV system. At that time and no doubt they have come down a lot since, they where $ 1200 each. They are still working fine to this day.

[ukrules]

The government probe into the procurement was conducted by a sub-panel assigned by Parliament, he said, adding that probes were also conducted by the Office of the Auditor General, the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the Department of Special Investigation.

In that case, someone should be looking at the above departments too, as they are clearly incompetent in rooting out corruption.

I do agree, HD devices used for CCTV are more specialist than standard commercial HD's. I purchased two 4TB CCTV/AV spec. HD's three years ago for a RAID archive system for our complex CCTV system. At that time and no doubt they have come down a lot since, they where $ 1200 each. They are still working fine to this day.

I'd like to see the full technical specifications of these devices which are under investigation.

If they're laying new physical fibre optic cable networks then this might explain the cost but it's certainly not the actual hard drives which cost that much.

Edited August 31, 2015 by ukrules

[jaidam]

To get rid of this normalized corruption and feeling of entitlement to be corrupt without shame that the junta is languishing in, I suggest a dramatic solution. What we need is a coup d'etat.

[BSJ]

Maybe they should get their supplies off ebay....they will save heaps!

[Don Mega]

4tb HDD in 2010 = 800k

4tb HDD in 2015 = 5k.

Yeah me thinks they might have over paid just a tad.

[aussieinthailand]

The government probe into the procurement was conducted by a sub-panel assigned by Parliament, he said, adding that probes were also conducted by the Office of the Auditor General, the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the Department of Special Investigation.

In that case, someone should be looking at the above departments too, as they are clearly incompetent in rooting out corruption.

I do agree, HD devices used for CCTV are more specialist than standard commercial HD's. I purchased two 4TB CCTV/AV spec. HD's three years ago for a RAID archive system for our complex CCTV system. At that time and no doubt they have come down a lot since, they where $ 1200 each. They are still working fine to this day.

Ok cool sounds good, but at $1200 a pop that's today 42,000 Baht, but they're quoting 800,000 a pop, something smells funky here man...

They may need some flash microphones so they can be heard justifying them selves? (what was the end result on that little chest nut?)

Now how much of the cable are they buying? meters? labor cost? and minimum of three quotes? would be nice.

[Anthony5]

He said the maintenance budget for the six items, which also includes fibre optic cables, was set at Bt22 million per year

I think that is a fair budget for such a system, after all those cameras are all up and operational. NOT

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

What a load of cr**....

Nothing the government guy says in the OP article in any way justifies the kinds of expenses that were alleged in connection with the purchased equipment.

[Seastallion]

I love the set up: Get billed way over the top for equipment, then have the maintenance set at a percentage of the purchase price.....perpetual income.

[Thian]

The government probe into the procurement was conducted by a sub-panel assigned by Parliament, he said, adding that probes were also conducted by the Office of the Auditor General, the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the Department of Special Investigation.

In that case, someone should be looking at the above departments too, as they are clearly incompetent in rooting out corruption.

I do agree, HD devices used for CCTV are more specialist than standard commercial HD's. I purchased two 4TB CCTV/AV spec. HD's three years ago for a RAID archive system for our complex CCTV system. At that time and no doubt they have come down a lot since, they where $ 1200 each. They are still working fine to this day.

I'd like to see the full technical specifications of these devices which are under investigation.

If they're laying new physical fibre optic cable networks then this might explain the cost but it's certainly not the actual hard drives which cost that much.

22 million baht a year! For camera's that don't work.

I just got fibrecable layed to my house, 750 baht a month included all, also the hardware.

[Dogbreath]

I bought a 3 terabyte external drive for my computer in 2012 for about 6,000 baht. It seems that 796,000 baht for the extra terabyte might be a tad excessive, but then I am not a politician or a bureaucrat, so what do I know?

[AlQaholic]

Lemmesee.....I bought a 2 terabyte disk at a well known IT center for about 4000 Baht, 2 terabytes + 2 terabytes is 4 terabytes, sooo....a 4 terabyte disk would not be more than 8000 Baht? Or did I miss something here?

My company where I Work is very strict regarding purchasing policy for computer hardware, for example I saw a price for a desktop all included with a 2 TB hard disk, the price was 60,000 Baht, I asked the IT why the #$%$# so expensive, they said have to have warranty 3 years for all parts including free (included in initial procurement cost) 3 years service, which is pretty good I think, and actually is not expensive at all if one considers the numbers we bought.

Edited September 1, 2015 by AlQaholic

[jamesbrock]

According to the original post that this story is taken from, which links to the six page document on the BMA website, these 19 hard drives appear to be just the tip of the corruption iceberg.

In addition to the 19 x 4TB HDD's for Bt800,000 each, there were 7 x 15TB HDD's at Bt2,777,001 each, and 3 x 20TB HDD's at Bt3,450,000 each, as well as many other highly dodgy purchases.

The fact that these purchases were cleared by the Office of the Auditor General, the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the Department of Special Investigation renders every other probe conducted by these agencies highly dubious.

[thunder18]

the four-terrabyte hard disks, worth Bt800,000 per unit, were bought in 2010.

4Tb in 2010??? Don't think so.

[IamNoone88]

It should not be too long before some-one mentions the maintenance of the tsunami warning system or lack thereof ....................

[WorldTravellerMUC]

Maybe we are lost in translation here and they do not mean "harddrive" but "raid system" since I am not sure 4TB harddrives were commonly available in 2010. Hitachi in 2008 was announcing 5TB for 2010, but I could not verify that they has quantities then available. Also as others mentioned before additional hardware could have been bundled-in.

So if it is a Raid system and when I was in the army in Germany years back I did see the prices the Army did pay for commodity items such as batteries and flashlightbulbs being in general 200% - 400% over the market price, we are getting actually close with the extra money they need to make. So let's say the price was 3,000 Euros for the Raid System and it is increased for the Government 300% - 400% we are getting closer adding the normal kick-back which I estimate being 100% for the various people involved. So we are "only" talking about a discrepancy of 400,000.00 THB per piece for the kick-back ot tea money or whatever we want to call it (probably in this case Champagne and Caviar -money).

The "discrepancy" aside It still is a shame what prices are paid compared to what would be necessary to be spent, but this is unfortunately how governments worldwide operate, not only here in Thailand. When it comes to spend tax money, they are very generous....

[jamesbrock]

Maybe we are lost in translation here and they do not mean "harddrive" but "raid system" since I am not sure 4TB harddrives were commonly available in 2010. Hitachi in 2008 was announcing 5TB for 2010, but I could not verify that they has quantities then available. Also as others mentioned before additional hardware could have been bundled-in.

So if it is a Raid system and when I was in the army in Germany years back I did see the prices the Army did pay for commodity items such as batteries and flashlightbulbs being in general 200% - 400% over the market price, we are getting actually close with the extra money they need to make. So let's say the price was 3,000 Euros for the Raid System and it is increased for the Government 300% - 400% we are getting closer adding the normal kick-back which I estimate being 100% for the various people involved. So we are "only" talking about a discrepancy of 400,000.00 THB per piece for the kick-back ot tea money or whatever we want to call it (probably in this case Champagne and Caviar -money).

The "discrepancy" aside It still is a shame what prices are paid compared to what would be necessary to be spent, but this is unfortunately how governments worldwide operate, not only here in Thailand. When it comes to spend tax money, they are very generous....

I agree. I worked in a lowly position at Australian Tax Office for nigh on a decade, and was responsible for a range of large and small procurement contracts. While we did have "preferred suppliers," and while those suppliers routinely charged us a "special government rate" (i.e. higher than retail), it was never in the range of 200% - 400% higher than retail; closer to 40% - 60%. That being said, I did catch one regular contractor attempt too charge us $15,000 to relocate a power outlet less than 1m along a wall...

Considering the contract also included 15Gb & 20GB HDD's (which aren't even available today), I'd say you're right about them being raid arrays - still, they paid 10-20 times the price of these items.

[Lupatria]

Your daily dose of Thai "Vitamin C"

[phoenixdoglover]

Cost of HDD storage in $/gb declined 50% to 80% from 2010 to 2015. A self contained 4tb RAID array today is a bit small, but in 2013 such capacities were typical (based on 1tb drives), and decent business grade units were running from $1,000 to $5,000.

Assuming a high end array at $5,000 for 4 tb in 2013, maybe the price was $10,000 in early 2010. This was retail, but add vendors "international shipping and customs charge" and installation, of course, plus 3 year onsite warranty. So something like $20,000 could be rationalized. That would be 600,000 THB.

Then add 200,000 THB "purchasing agent facilitation fee", and you have the 800,000 THB .

[MobileContent]

BMA is one of the most corrupt organization in Bangkok after the police and it doesn't matter who is the governor.

[tx22cb]

Maybe we are lost in translation here and they do not mean "harddrive" but "raid system" since I am not sure 4TB harddrives were commonly available in 2010. Hitachi in 2008 was announcing 5TB for 2010, but I could not verify that they has quantities then available. Also as others mentioned before additional hardware could have been bundled-in.).

....

No, it's not a RAID system.

The line item specifically says just the hard drives. There are other line items specifying other aspects of the system, including wiring/interfaces, RAID arrays etc.

Source: the BMA document linked in one of the posts above.

It's just pure corruption.

[tx22cb]

.....

The fact that these purchases were cleared by the Office of the Auditor General, the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the Department of Special Investigation renders every other probe conducted by these agencies highly dubious.

If you are from the Righteous faction, the probes from these august bodies will absolve you.

If you are from the Devil's camp, these bodies will get out their fine tooth-combs and prosecute you.

[DrTuner]

5k for HDD, 795k to add the necessary Thainess to them. Must be the cost of monks blessing the drives.

[Ulic]

A friend of mine involved in HD video production bought 2 - 4 terabyte hard drives in (I believe)

2008. They were used for editing raw HD content footage into television shows. The cost was

$14,000 USD. each. Not 100% sure of the year but that was the cost. I will check with him.

[Jonmarleesco]

The government probe into the procurement was conducted by a sub-panel assigned by Parliament, he said, adding that probes were also conducted by the Office of the Auditor General, the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the Department of Special Investigation.

In that case, someone should be looking at the above departments too, as they are clearly incompetent in rooting out corruption.

I do agree, HD devices used for CCTV are more specialist than standard commercial HD's. I purchased two 4TB CCTV/AV spec. HD's three years ago for a RAID archive system for our complex CCTV system. At that time and no doubt they have come down a lot since, they where $ 1200 each. They are still working fine to this day.

$1,200 = B41,000, somewhat less than the B800,000 forked out by the Thai taxpayer, courtesy of the BMA. Difficult to justify such a grossly inflated figure; nigh on impossible to explain the logic, even the Thai version, in thinking that they could get away with not being expected to justify it.

[sammygood]

lucrative business in the Land Of no SHAME

[Morakot]

Lemmesee.....I bought a 2 terabyte disk at a well known IT center for about 4000 Baht, 2 terabytes + 2 terabytes is 4 terabytes, sooo....a 4 terabyte disk would not be more than 8000 Baht? Or did I miss something here?

Yes you missed a raid controller and mirror disk to set up a proper system.

• High end disk, (4TB): 15,000
• High end disk, mirror (4TB): 15,000
• High end raid controller: 20,000

Total: 50,000

Edited September 1, 2015 by Morakot