The electoral agency IEBC bought SIM cards at thrice the market price in last year’s polls with the Auditor-General declaring taxpayers did not get value for money in the poll deals with the telecoms firms.
National Assembly Public Accounts Committee yesterday revealed that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) bought a SIM card at Sh173 against the average market cost of Sh50.
Committee chairman Opiyo Wandayi (Ugunja), MPs Junet Mohammed (Suna West) and Kuria Kimani (Molo) put the commission to task to explain how “special” the SIM cards were.
“What kind of SIM cards did you buy because we also use cards and they don’t cost Sh173?” asked Molo MP Kuria Kimani. “I expected the commission to get a discount and even buy the sim cards at Sh10 because you were buying in bulk,” Mr Kimani added.
Auditor-General Edward Ouko said late delivery, and in some instances, non-provision of services as well as purchases of excess goods, led to losses exceeding half-a billion shillings from purchases from telcos.
Head of procurement Bernard Nyacheo told the committee that former CEO Ezra Chiloba ordered direct procurement of the sim cards.
The Auditor-General has questioned the Sh1.3 billion paid to Airtel, Telkom Kenya and Safaricom for transmitting election results during last year’s poll.
“However, audit has revealed that out of the total Sh1, 345,515,190 for purchase of goods and services relating to results transmission, an amount of Sh555,424,638 was not effectively utilised,” Mr Ouko said.
He said 149,640.5 gigabytes (GB) of data bundles valued at Sh127.6 million were bought from the three service providers but the actual SIM card data use revealed that 605.3GB valued at Sh515,269 were used.
Mr Ouko questioned the purchase of Sh1.08 billion Thuraya IP+SIM loaded with unlimited bundles for five days, arguing that some were delivered after the polls. Only 553 modems and SIM cards loaded with data were delivered on August 24, 2017, but records showed these goods were received on October 5, 2017 and January 17, 2018 respectively.
copied: businessdailyafrica.com
