IEBC top official admits to supply of wrong gadgets

A senior official of Kenya's electoral commission yesterday admitted that the electoral body was provided with voter identification devices, different from those it had tendered for.

Appearing before a Parliamentary committee yesterday, Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Deputy Chief Executive Officer Beatrice Nyabuto said the Tender Committee approved procurement of hand-held Electronic Voter Identification Devices (EVIDs), but were instead supplied with laptops.

She said some of the devices arrived at polling stations when they were low in power, hence unable to handle the critical function, while some handlers were not sufficiently trained on operating the machines.

Ms Nyabuto, who chaired the tender committee, said she only learnt that what was procured is not what they had approved when the devices were in the country.

Letter Ignored

But she was hard-pressed to explain why IEBC ignored a recommendation by the commission's then ICT Director, Dismas Ong’ondi to stop procurement of the devices after the company identified to supply them admitted that they could fail.

Members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) challenged her to explain why the letter written by Ong’ondi on November 11, 2012, asking IEBC to terminate the tender since it had not been signed, was ignored.

"This advice from an ICT guru was given to the commission before the contract was signed. It was informed by the admission by the supplying company that the system of identification may fail. Why would this advise be ignored?  Was it to facilitate a failure?" asked Suna MP Junet Mohamed.

The deputy CEO said there was no way IEBC would have failed to procure the identification kits, saying political parties had indicated to the commission that they had to acquire the gadgets for the electroral process to be seen as transparent.

"We did not intend to undermine the election. We met political parties and their position was very clear. They did not want to hear anything short of voter identification devices," she said.

MPs wondered why the electoral body did not consider re-tendering for the devices after the company that had been contracted to supply the same, Face Technology, wrote to it, requesting to change the gadgets from the hand-held devices to laptops.

Nyabuto said that while she was aware that Face Technology met with the commission after indicating they could not supply the hand-held devices, she was not privy to the specific issues discussed.