A Civil Court has turned down an application for a warrant of prohibitory injunction filed by the Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises (GRTU) to stop the government from concluding the tendering process for the leasing of personal computers and laptops and workstation support services for Maltese schools and teachers.

The application for a warrant of prohibitory injunction was filed in June against the Prime Minister, the Industry, Investments and Information Technology Ministry, the Director General of the Contracts Department and the Malta Information Technology and Training Services Ltd (MITTS).

The GRTU had complained about the clause in the tender document that obliges tenderers to provide “desktop PCs (which) should be equipped with a TFT monitor of the same brand as the tower/desktop” and another clause that states that the bidders have to submit a bid bond of Lm25,000.

The GRTU claimed that these two conditions are in breach of the principles of the European Union which states that all public tenders have to be made accessible to small and medium-sized enterprises.

In its judgement, handed down by Mr Justice Joseph Micallef, the Civil Court said that the bid bond was not a fixed sum but was aimed at guaranteeing the seriousness of the bidder if he is chosen as one of the best bidders and eventually called to enter into a contract.

The court ruled that the GRTU’s claim that the bid bond was too expensive for small and medium-sized enterprises who wanted to bid for this contract did not amount to a breach of the law.

On the other complaint regarding the TFT monitor of the same brand as the tower/desktop, the court said that even this was not in breach of any law or any of its members’ rights. It said any entity has the right to choose and specify what it wanted service-providers to provide.

Mr Justice Micallef therefore rejected the GRTU’s request for a warrant of prohibitory injunction and withdrew the decree by which it had temporarily upheld the request until the case had been heard.

As a result of this decision, MITTS Ltd will be resuming the tendering process and has extended the deadline until 12 noon on 10 August.