KEY POINTS:
Police penny-pinching cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars when they tried to carry out part of their vest supplier's job themselves, Parliament was told yesterday.
New Zealand First MP Ron Mark said police tried to save money by measuring for new stab-proof vests in-house.
"Instead of allowing the manufacturer, Aegis, who knew what they were doing, to measure the vests and guarantee under contract a 99 per cent success rate with the fit - at no risk to police - they decided to try to save money by doing the measuring themselves and accept the full financial risk of any mistakes made.
Their decision resulted in a $2.7 million blow-out with no ability to recover those costs from Aegis, he said.
The wrong measurements meant around 1700 vests were now in storage because they did not fit.
As Mr Mark eloquently put it: "Rather than the contract being well measured, well fitted, containing no slack, no slop, the cloth from which this contract was cut was found to be wanting. And the police have totally stitched themselves up and managed to do what no one else could, and that was to make a sow's ear out of a silk purse."
Police Minister Annette King said she was not satisfied with how the project had been handled and the person who had been running it was not in charge any more.
Deputy Commissioner Rob Pope had taken over.
Ms King said it was "unwise" to decide to do the measuring in house. The project was now back on track for delivery in December.
Auditor-General Kevin Brady looked into the contract for the vests and wrote to Mr Mark.
He said police had learned lessons and acknowledged they should have let Aegis do the measuring despite a fee being charged; that contract details and penalty clauses had to be considered carefully; that difficulties in dealing with a long-distance supplier needed to be taken into account and quality-control issues needed to be planned for.
The vests were expected to cost $6.4 million but the final figure was $10.4 million. This included $2.7 million for extra vests because of the wrong measurements. Other increases of about $1.4 million included costs Mr Brady said could have been planned for, such as for manuals.
Last month 5320 staff had the vests, which included more than 80 per cent of frontline staff.
- NZPA
