The three companies are accused of supporting Jubilee

NASA Members of Parliament announce the boycott of products from three companies in Nairobi on Friday. [Pic/Standard]

NASA members of parliament on Friday 3 called on their supporters to boycott goods and services from Safaricom, Bidco and Brookside dairy.

Homabay Woman Representative Gladys Wanga accused the three companies of supporting the Jubilee Government, and therefore assisting in frustrating reforms.

The legislators spoke at Okoa Kenya offices in Nairobi during what they described as the launch of Economic Liberation Program by the National Resistance Movement.

Busia Woman Representative Florence Mutua said the move was in line with the directions of NASA principals who had directed the Alliances' MPs to interpret a roadmap to the restoration of electoral democracy.

She added that economic liberation throgh boycotts was part of the interpretation.

Mobile telephony provider, Safaricom is Kenya's biggest corporation and has posted a half-year net income of Sh26.2 billion up from Sh21.6 billion the same period last year.

Bidco is the biggest manufacturer of edible oils in Kenya, while Brookside which is associated with President Uhuru Kenyatta's family is the biggest dairy concern in East Africa.

In September NASA presidential candidate Raila Odinga challenged Safaricom to explain whether or not it routed results to a server in Paris, France, and whether it routed those results back to Kenya.
Responding, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore denied the NASA allegations as he clarified the firm’s role in the last General Election.

Contrary to what is alleged in the NASA statement, results from the KIEMS kits from Safaricom zones were transmitted and are on the IEBC web portal,” said Mr Collymore.

He explained that Safaricom Ltd was to provide a dedicated secure tunnel to transmit the encrypted data from the KIEMS kits to the IEBC server, also known as a Virtual Private Network or VPN.
The firm was also meant to provide technical support to IEBC before, during and after Election Day, including a dedicated project manager.

In addition, he added, Safaricom was to provide a record of transmission from all the SIM cards provided to IEBC under the contract for purposes of the General Election.
On how transmission was conducted, Collymore explained the country was divided into zones allocated to Safaricom, Telkom Kenya and Airtel Kenya, collectively known as the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).

All the KIEMS kits, he explained, had two SIM cards, with one MNO as a primary provider and the other MNO as a secondary one, he said. Each of the MNOs established a VPN to transmit results from areas where they were either a primary or secondary provider.

“The role of the MNOs was therefore merely to transmit the results from the KIEMS kits to the IEBC servers. In accordance with the contract with IEBC, all the mobile operators connected their VPNs and transmitted the data to the IEBC cloud servers.

It was IEBC’s responsibility to transmit results from its servers to the tallying centres and this was publicly available information,” Collymore said.