On Thursday, the Parliament gave the
government until end of September to make sure that the devices at all
police stations are working in order to speed up identification of
criminals.
The directive was issued by Deputy
Speaker, Dr Tulia Ackson, after receiving a report on the controversial
37bn/- tender the Police awarded to Lugumi Enterprise Limited in 2011 to
procure and instal scanners at all the police stations.
Yesterday, Home Affairs Permanent
Secretary (PS), Maj Gen Projest Rwegasira, told the ‘Daily News on
Saturday’ that the only task remaining was to connect the installed
devices to the national fibre optic network to make them operational.
He said plans were underway to convene a
meeting of experts from the ministry, police and other interesting
parties to look into how to go about the connection work.
“I cannot tell the exact time of
completion of the connection work, but we are optimistic that we can
connect the devices to the network within the three months,” he said,
noting that the police stations located near the network would be
connected first.
The contract that the police force
entered into with the Lugumi Enterprises Limited involved supplying and
installing automated fingerprint devices at 108 district police stations
across the country. However, the gadgets had been fixed at only 14
stations while the firm had already received 99 per cent of payments.
The Controller and Auditor General
(CAG)’s 2013/2014 report showed that the company had already been paid
almost 90 per cent of the contract (34bn/- ), yet it had not completed
the project that kicked off five years ago.
In April, this year, PAC formed a
subcommittee to investigate the performance of the 37bn/- controversial
contract between the embattled Lugumi Enterprises Limited and the Police
Force involving fixing Automated Fingerprint Information System (AFIS)
to police stations.
The subcommittee was told to submit a report to PAC for further scrutiny
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