Politics and policy
Mombasa Town Clerk Tubman Otieno inspects a transparent tender box installed at Town Hall. PHOTO | FILE
By BRIAN WASUNA
In Summary
- Government awarded Sh174bn coal plant project to joint bidders Centum Investments and Chinese firm Gulf Energy.
Public procurement has featured prominently in the
High Court this year, following dissatisfaction over the award of some
of Kenya’s biggest deals to some firms.
The government, following the need for cheaper energy to
grow the industrial sector, floated a tender to construct the first ever
coal plant in the region.
The Sh174 billion project was awarded to a joint
bid by Centum Investments and Chinese firm Gulf Energy, a move that saw
some bidders protest. The High Court stopped the signing of the deal on
November 27, following a suit filed by Liketh Investments challenging
the award of the deal to the consortium.
Liketh Investments, which had partnered with
Chinese firm HCIG, claimed that both Centum and Gulf Energy had been
kicked out of the evaluation stage then sneaked back in the later
stages, a move the firm claims was engineered to ensure Centum got the
deal. After stopping the deal, Lady Justice Mumbi Ngugi referred the
suit to the petition committee arguing that the High Court could not
hear the matter before all tender appellate mechanisms had been
exhausted.
“Pending the hearing and determination of the
matter before the petition committee, the respondents (government and
Centum-Gulf Energy) are restrained from entering into any agreement
regarding the coal power plant,” she said.
A court also cancelled a Sh24 billion tender
awarded to Indian firm Olive Telecommunications to supply laptops to
Standard One pupils. The project was part of the Jubilee Government’s
pre-election promises.
Olive moved to court challenging the tender after
the Public Procurement Oversight Authority opted to apply brakes on the
deal to investigate the alleged irregularities during the evaluation.
Justices George Odunga, Francis Gikonyo and Weldon
Korir, however, ordered that the entire process be quashed and done
afresh as there were too many irregularities prior to Olive’s win.
“By awarding the tender to any of the bidders, the
court would have abetted an illegality. It is our view that in order to
promote equity and cost effectiveness, the tendering process is null and
void and set aside in its entirety,” they ruled.
An additional Sh1.4 billion Olive quoted midway
through evaluation and its plan to sub-contract third parties in the
supply of the machines were the leading reasons the judges opted to
order for a fresh tendering of the multi-billion shilling deal.
Central Bank Governor Njuguna Ndung’u found himself
at the centre of controversy after two conflicting rulings surrounding a
decision by the financial institutions regulator to award a British
firm a deal to install a new security system to help it fight banking
fraud and ease operations.
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