The Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises filed an application yesterday for a prohibitory injunction to be issued by the courts in connection with a tender for “leasing of personal computers/ laptops and work station support services” for the public sector.

This is the second application for an injunction filed against the IT and Invest-ment Ministry and the MITTS Director-General in connection with this tender. The first was rejected on 3 August.

In its application, the GRTU said that the tender as issued is harmful to the state of affairs of small and medium enterprises and contradicts the government’s claims to be in favour of boosting them (SMEs).

The GRTU went on to explain why it felt this way, saying that SMEs cannot hope to submit an offer for the contract due to the nature of the call for tender. In its application, the GRTU said that by issuing this contract, the government was destroying any form of competition in the market. It added that the government was ignoring the European Commission’s recommendations for governments to make public tenders more accessible to small and medium enterprises.

The GRTU said that the tender process has been in breach of regulations and is illegal, due to the fact that the MITTS director-general admitted that he had spoken to some, but not all, of the organisations that had submitted tenders. The GRTU said that this was a form of discrimination against its members who were in the IT and computer system field.

Dr Ian Spiteri Bailey signed the application.