PS faces punishment over city roads

Jun 19, 2008

THE public procurement authority (PPDA) wants the permanent secretary in the works ministry, Charles Muganzi, to face disciplinary action for allegedly flouting procurement rules in the award of sh10b for emergency works on Kampala roads.

By Barbara Among

THE public procurement authority (PPDA) wants the permanent secretary in the works ministry, Charles Muganzi, to face disciplinary action for allegedly flouting procurement rules in the award of sh10b for emergency works on Kampala roads.

“The accounting officer is held responsible for flouting the law and procurement rules and he should be subjected to disciplinary action by the head of Public Service,” the PPDA said in a report. The authority also wants the acting commissioner for roads, Augustine Obyero Mugisa, reprimanded for not using standard bidding documents.

“After a review of the records pertaining to this procurement, the authority finds gross mismanagement in the procurement process and award of tenders for emergency repair of Kampala city roads,” the report added.
Efforts to get comments from the head of the public service or the permanent secretary failed.

Frustrated with the appaling state of Kampala’s roads and KCC’s apparent incapability to handle the problem, works minister John Nasasira in late 2006 said the Government was taking over repair and maintenance of the main roads.

The Government wanted to ensure that the roads were fine for the November 2007 Commonwealth summit.

The roads to be repaired were divided into two lots, with the first one covering the eastern and northern parts and the second covering the central and western parts of Kampala.
Four firms, Cementers, Dott Services, Spencon Services and Sterling Civil Engineering, were contacted to submit proposals.

But none of the bidders met the requirements stipulated in the bid documents, the authority found. The bid evaluation team used direct procurement instead of the approved restricted bidding method.

Approval for procurement and confirmation of funds, the probe further discovered, was done retrospectively.

The Public Procurement form was signed on January 3, 2007, the day the contracts committee awarded the tenders, yet the invitation to bidders had been sent out on December 23, 2006.
Although the firms contacted already had too much work, no local firms were contacted to submit proposals, contrary to the recommendation of the contracts committee.

This partly explains why the repair works, which involved the filling of potholes, dragged on much longer than the three-month deadline.

The bid document, the report noted, simply estimated the cost of the repairs at sh10b, indicating that the process was prone to corruption from the start. The companies only stated rates, making it difficult to ascertain the likely overall contract price.

“This implies that the entity could not have a proper contract estimate since the scope of work may change.” In addition, the investigation found that the bid evaluation team was not nominated by the ministry’s procurement and disposal unit, as required by law. The team, according to the report, also ignored the evaluation criteria and only focussed on comparison of the rates.

Although the letters of invitation indicated that there were two lots, the evaluation team split the lots into four and directly distributed them to the bidders.

The rates differ considerably from company to company. The tender document shows that of the total estimated cost of 8.2b, Sterling was given sh1.9b for 23km of roads while Cementers and Dott Services were each given the same amount for 15km and 8km respectively.

Spencon Services, on the other hand, was allocated sh2.4b for 17km.
The probe also revealed that the companies were ordered to start the repair works without any signed contracts.

“The Authority notes that lack of contracts makes it difficult to monitor the performance of the contractors, establish the contract value and it becomes complicated in case of legal disputes,” said PPDA.

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