Some officials from the Department of Irrigation and Water Development and Statutory Corporations attempted to cover up a mis-procurement case involving K500 million at Southern Region Water Board (SRWB).
That is according to former Chairperson of the Board of Directors for SRWB, John Kapito.
The matter in question is systems upgrade procurement contracts entered in the years between 2012 and 2014 whose costs inexplicably ballooned from the initial K29 million to K500 million.
The discovery was made after the Kapito-led board, suspicious at how the cost could have risen by 1,460 percent, called in the National Audit Office and Office of Director of Public Procurement (ODPP) for independent investigations.
The Board of Directors engaged the two departments in May last year and they released their reports in June.
Contacted on progress since the revelations which we carried in this paper last year, Kapito said the issue was one that split the Board of Directors such that there were even efforts by some members to frustrate the investigations.
“I must confess that this was an audit that received a lot of resistance from some board members especially the ex-official directors from the Department of Water and Irrigation and Statutory Corporation. They kept on lobbying some directors not to punish the officers concerned because according to them this K500 million mis-procurement to them was a small amount and they questioned why as a Chairperson of Board I insisted on pursuing it,” he said.
He added: “This was a matter of corruption bordering on fraud that I saw a board divided and compromised but I relentlessly pushed on with the support of a few board members and those board members know who they are.”
He declined to name the officials in question.
Ex-official members in the board included Secretary for Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development and Comptroller of Statutory Corporations.
Principal Secretary for Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development Erica Maganga indicated in a brief phone interview that she was not aware of the audit reports.
She asked for an email which she had not yet responded to as we went to press.
Now out of the SRWB structure, Kapito still hopes that the Auditor General’s office and Anti Corruption Bureau will investigate the matter further after he personally handed the reports of the initial investigation to them.
“As an ordinary citizen I am watching just like any other person to see the action from the office of the Chief Secretary and the ACB,” he said.
Spokesperson for the National Audit Office Rabson Kagwamminga said they submitted their report to “relevant authorities so that they can act on the mater accordingly”.
Senior Public Relations Officer for ACB Egrita Ndala confirmed they are in receipt of the reports in question.
“The Bureau is in receipt of the complaint on procurement at Southern Region Water Board. It is in the process of reviewing the documents which were submitted in order for the bureau to see what action can be taken,” she said.
In their investigation, both NAO and ODPP found fault with the whole procurement process.
NAO established that management “never attempted to bring this contract or intention to introduce contract discussion” to the agenda of the Board of Directors. This concealment, NAO suspected, was deliberate.
Both NAO and ODPP also had issues with the involvement of SWRB chief executive officer in the contract.
The reports said the chief executive officer at the was the one who wrote the consultant on the awarding of the contract and he was also Chairman of the International Procurement Committee (IPC) that recommended and approved the engagement of the Ugandan firm Syscorp for the project.
ODPP noted that the chairing of IPC meetings by the chief executive officer had the potential to exert pressure on the IPC in its decision making.
It was also found that when the Board of Directors raised eyebrows with the way this procurement was handled and sought explanation, the management engaged an official from the ODPP in his private capacity for his independent professional opinion on the matter. The investigators found that this was done to prevent outsiders, including the ODPP, from being aware of the possible underhand dealings.
The ODPP report found that SRWB had already paid the contractor 84.4 percent ($480,597) of the money. However, at the time of their investigation, there was no evidence on when the project was supposed to commence and when it was expected to complete.
Among other recommendations, NAO wanted management at SWRB and all officers involved to face disciplinary action for being negligent.
It also demanded that management should account for all overpayments to the consultant and that Syscorp to reimburse the duplicated payments.
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