MPS TO SUMMON IEBC OVER TENDER

MPS TO SUMMON IEBC OVER TENDER

MONDAY, 23 JULY 2012 00:02 BY WESONGA OCHIENG AND MOSOKU GEOFFREY

PROBE: Mutava Musyimi addressing the media at ACK Cathedral church in Mombasa yesterday. Photo/Norbert Allan

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Parliament is in the next few days expected to summon the Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission to shed more light on the Biometric Voter Registration kits tender process. Yesterday, Gachoka MP Mutava Musyimi and member of the Justice and Legal Affairs committee said Kenyans need to be told more about the tender that has raised eyebrows. “We, and indeed Kenyans are uncomfortable about the boardroom wars in the IEBC and the processing of the BVR tendering process. They must put their house in order and live above board. More needs to be told about the controversy surrounding that tender,” said Mutava.

Kenyan company Symphony Africa is on the verge of being given the Sh3.9 billion tender to supply the new biometric voter registration kits. Last Thursday, the IEBC said it had decided not to award the tender to 4G Identity Solution Pvt Limited even it had bit the lowest. The commission is today expected to start its due diligence probe on Symphony Africa. Last Friday the commission CEO James Oswago wrote to Symphony informing it of the commissioners intended visit to its Westlands offices due tomorrow.

Oswago said the tendering committee will decide if it will be traveling to Pakistan and Germany to assess the suitability of Symphony’s partners. “They will decide if officials from those companies will avail themselves in Nairobi or our officers will travel. That will be decided by the tendering committee,” Oswago added. Symphony is working with Dermalog of Germany and SecureTech which is registered in Dubai with operations office in Islamabad, Pakistani.

Among the issues the IEBC wants to establish is whether Symphony has the financial and technical ability to deliver the 9,750 kits on time as well as train the commission’s registration clerks. The winner of the tender is expected to deliver about 14 equipments including batteries, laptops, invertors, cameras, scanners and solar panels Symphony, in its tender documents says it can beat the deadline given that they are the only IT firm with a clearing agency— Systems Integrated Agency.

During the technical tender stage in Naivasha, Symphony brought from Dubai Brigadier Saleem Moeen, who designed the current tamper proof Kenyan passport. Moeen (SecureTech) is also the designer of the software which will be used in the registration of the estimated 19 million voters. The firm also says it has an international bank with a heavy presence in Kenya that has guaranteed them with a $45million (Sh3.7 billion) for the order and delivery of the kits.

The firm is however alleged to have been blacklisted in the 1990s by the Parliament Accounts Committee (PAC) after it allegedly failed to deliver to the Kenya Revenue Authority. The company was operating by the name Computer Applications Limited (CAL). CAL which later changed to Symphony Africa is a subsidiary of the Da Gama Rose group (DGR) which also runs the Institute of Advanced Technology (IAT)

However, Symphony managing director Rajender Singh Sachdeva says that the matter was cleared and the firm given a clean bill of health. “This was a normal parliament process which ended up clearing CAL and therefore it will be malicious and untrue that the ban was placed on CAL,” Singh added.

The Symphony boss insisted that the firm has continued to have a healthy relationship with the government and thus winning lucrative tenders such as the multi-million dollar E-Government. “Symphony has undertaken, with various Governments in the region some the biggest of the projects. The largest ever project with GoK for its E-Government project was completed by Symphony in record time, two years ago. This multi-million dollar project (in the same class as the BVR project) required delivery/implementation of 16000 units for about 1000 locations country-wide,” he added. Singh said that among the clients of Symphony are Safaricom whose IT system the company maintains, Aga Khan and Nairobi hospitals, KCB among others.