House team clears Safaricom security tender award

A National Assembly committee has cleared the national security surveillance tender awarded to Safaricom and is seeking the House's approval of the contract.

The Assembly’s Administration and National Security committee said at the conclusion of its investigation into the tender award to the mobile service provider that it was satisfied that due diligence was carried out.

The tender is for the provision of a national surveillance, communication, and command and control system for the National Police Service.

The House team concluded that the procurement process for the Sh14.9 billion project was above board and all necessary stakeholders were consulted.

It thus recommended that the National Assembly approve the tender award and the signing of the contract to Safaricom.

URGENCY OF SECURITY CHALLENGES

The committee defended the use of direct procurement for the project, arguing that it was necessitated by the urgency of the need to sort out the security challenges in the country.

“The insecurity problems in this country were such that the other methods of procurement save for direct procurement would have been impractical… the circumstances therefore justify direct procurement in this tender,” the report states in its final report now before the House.

The committee did not find any ulterior motive on the choice of Safaricom to implement the project, noting that given the urgency and the precarious security situation in the country, Safaricom was the most appropriate entity to implement the project.

It adds that the company has the requisite financial capability and the experience in providing a telecommunication network and infrastructure in the country.

The committee took up the matter following media reports in May that provoked public concern that Safaricom had been awarded the tender for the sensitive security system through direct procurement.

CONTRACT PUT ON HOLD

The team directed that the signing of the contract for the project be put on hold last month until all the related concerns were addressed.

It met top officers in the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, including the technical committee, which evaluated and approved the tender for the surveillance and communication system.

The team, comprising senior government officials in the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology and the National Intelligence Service, was asked to justify the choice of direct procurement.

The team also met officials from the Communications Authority of Kenya as well as independent communication experts, the Public Procurement Oversight Authority, Safaricom and Cabinet Secretaries of the ministries involved and the Director of Procurement at the National Treasury.

According to the 29-member team, the project should be expanded to cover the rest of the country as soon as "is practically possible."

PREVIOUS TENDERS WERE PROTRACTED

The report states that it emerged during the meetings with the various entities involved that the direct procurement of Safaricom was settled upon due to the protracted nature of previous tenders for police communication and surveillance systems.

The Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government — the procuring entity — also had an urgent need set for a security system to address the high security challenges in the country.

The ministry told the committee that the procurement was necessitated by the need to replace what it termed an obsolete communication system currently in use, which was installed three decades ago.

According to the ministry, the current system has largely contributed to the security challenges facing the country.

The new security system project comprises four components: a digital trunking radio network, a central command operation centre, installation of a video surveillance system and Internet connectivity to police stations.

Under the project, Safaricom will build the network to be used in the proposed system and then hand it over to the National Police Service for use.

The Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government indicated that the network to be used in the system will be independent of Safaricom’s commercial network.

SHARE INFRASTRUCTURE

It, however, emerged that the system would share passive infrastructure such as Base System Masts with the commercial network.

The proposed project is valued at Sh14.9 billion over a five-year repayment period. The cost is to cater for the purchase of the equipment, its installation and networking to link it to the central command centre.

The report details the cost breakdown as Sh12.7 billion for building the system and Sh2.2 billion for maintenance support over the five-year period.

In the first phase, the project will cover Nairobi and Mombasa, according to information from the implementing ministry.

The government would have to pay an extra Sh21 billion to set up the project in the rest of the country.

Part of the payment by the government to Safaricom would be in the form of Spectrum for Safaricom to roll out the Long-Term Evolution 4G networks, both for commercial use and for use by the proposed police system.

The technical committee said Safaricom was chosen because of its ability to provide the specification of the system in a timely manner and due to its wide network coverage in the country.

PROCUREMENT WAS ABOVE BOARD
The committee’s conclusion that the procurement process was above board was partly informed by a review of the tender by the Public Procurement Oversight Authority, which concluded that the procurement method used was within the law and the procuring entity had met the threshold for direct procurement as provided for by the Public Procurement and Disposal Act.

Also captured in the committee’s report is past unsuccessful efforts by the government to overhaul the communication system of the police over the last 12 years.

“Having tried different types of procurement methods with little success, the government reopened bidding for a contract to install a state of the art integrated public safety communication and surveillance system in 2014 but limited it to one company with the decision to procure directly,” it states in its report.

The committee’s investigation was meant to determine whether due process was followed in the procurement process as well as the system’s general safety.