The World Bank has sanctioned a construction and general trade
company based in South Sudan for 15 months over allegations of
corruption while undertaking the Uganda Teacher and School Effectiveness
Project.
At the same time, the Bank announced a
24-month sanction of India-based SAI Consulting Engineering Ltd over
alleged fraud in three projects in Africa.
The $33
million project that has landed the Sudanese firm, Universal for General
Construction and Trading Company, in trouble was financed by the Global
Partnership for Education through the World Bank to help the Ugandan
government to improve the standards in primary education.
The
grant would go towards constructing in 138 schools in 31 districts;
classrooms, functioning girls’ and boys’ toilets and access to water in
the needy schools as well as improving teacher effectiveness. These
schools were selected through a combined needs and effort-based
assessment.
The three-year project would benefit more
than eight million pupils from new textbooks; a million pupils from
improved teacher effectiveness in early grade reading teaching; 112,000
others from new classrooms and another 80,000 from trained childhood
caregivers.
They would also retrain about 20,800 teachers in primary schools on early grade reading.
Universal is alleged to have used an undeclared agent to prepare
a false certificate for a bid on a school construction component of the
project.
The certificate substantially and falsely
inflated a prior contract’s true value. The company did not ultimately
win the contract.
The debarment of the Universal
announced on July 10, makes the Juba-based construction giant
unqualified to participate in World Bank-financed projects for the given
time.
No comments :
Post a Comment