The Rot in the IEBC continue being exposed

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission went flat out to award contracts to certain firms, against all legal and regulatory challenges, to the loss of the taxpayer.

IEBC also bought some items at three times the market rate even as it paid for materials that were delivered long after the 2017 election had ended.

Besides Safran which enjoyed inexplicable privilege, IEBC — against myriad court cases and petitions to the procurement regulatory authority — went flat out to ensure Al Ghurair Printing and Publishing LLC, a Dubai-based company which the Opposition linked to the Jubilee candidate, printed and delivered ballot papers.

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“Engagement of Al Ghurair was wrought with litigation and the commission position was manifest all through in the defence of the company. In fact, IEBC didn’t provide room for alternative. It was fixated on this company,” says an insider.

The presidential papers for the General Election arrived on August 1, 2017. Implicitly, IEBC wasn’t time-strapped as it claimed to justify the contract award to Al Ghurair.

The offer followed a plenary resolution that an alternative international company be identified to procure the ballots in line with a court judgment that almost disrupted IEBC’s plan to award Al Ghurair. The Court annulled the contract on the basis that IEBC failed to conduct the statutory public participation.

Notably, Al Ghurair printed an extra 1.2 million (instead of the 196,115 agreed at the Plenary) presidential ballots in controversial circumstances, a matter that further complicated the already strained relations between Chebukati and Chiloba.

On August 1, 2017 — just a week to election — Chebukati asked Chiloba to explain “who gave (him) authority to print excess of 1.2 million instead of 196,115 ballot papers (1 per cent of the total requisition).

The one percent was to cater for spoilt ballots and “adverse circumstances “as well as reduce the risk of mismanagement of ballot papers”.

In his response, Chiloba agreed that plenary had resolved that, indeed, one percent extra ballots were to be printed but the number was to be “rounded off to the nearest 50”. How IEBC resolved this isn’t known, for the matter appeared to have ended with Chiloba’s response.

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Apart from the controversy-strewn contracts for KIEMS and ballot papers, almost all other financial deals had a tint of fraud. The acquisition of data bundles can only pass for a spending binge.

IEBC acquired Sh127.6 million worth of data bundles (149,640GB or 149TB) from Safaricom, Telkom and Airtel. Yet when the Auditor General analysed Internet use on the SIM cards, only 605.3GB of bundles worth Sh515,269 had been used — a mere 0.4 per cent of the acquisition.

It’s incomprehensible that IEBC didn’t enter into a postpaid arrangement with the telcos. Either elements in the secretariat were out to make a fast kill or an extravagant IEBC failed to pre-quantify the amount of data required before issuing the contract. Consequently, Sh127.08 million went to waste or was misappropriated.

The IBM infrastructure contract awarded on July 17, 2017 and scheduled to run through to June 2018, was given out for Sh425 million yet the evaluation committee had recommended that it be procured at Sh75 million.

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Neurotech Systems Ltd is owned by Dan Kinyua Njuguna. A multimillion-shilling company with a presence in five African countries, it is intriguingly classified by the Public Procurement Oversight Authority (PPOA) among “disadvantaged” SME companies — those earmarked for Affirmative Action.

Despite non-compliance, IEBC still engaged Neurotech — through direct procurement — to supply and deliver storage expansion for the converged infrastructure, at a cost of Sh165.7 million.

Sh165.7 million was paid against a user requisition of Sh124 million. The equipment was delivered on January 9, 2018 — well after the FPE. In the end, IEBC paid Neurotech Sh415 million for facilities never used during the two elections.

The rot that was experienced in the IEBC in the entire election period each and every day continue trickling in showing how the tax payer money was used in accordingly.

Do you think they are capable of holding another election or it should be disbanded?

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