Africa-Press – Tanzania. ….Disbands boards of directors
PRESIDENT Samia Suluhu Hassan on Saturday uncovered massive rot in the tender awarding process for the construction of five ships to ply in Lake Victoria, Tanganyika and Indian Ocean.
The Head of State also revealed irregularities and scams in the contracts signed by the Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) with three different firms for installation of payment systems.
Following the situation, President Samia disbanded the board of directors of the TPA and the Maritime Services Company Limited (MSCL), warning that the government under her administration will not embrace any rot in the country.
She also tasked respective authorities among them Minister for Works and Transport Prof Makame Mbarawa and Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) to take immediate stringent measures against all those involved in the scams.
President Samia issued the directives during an event to inaugurate berths number 0 to 7 at the Port of Dar es Salaam.
Speaking on the ship building tender, the Head of State said YücelTekin Ship Building Company (YÜTEK) of Turkey won the bid and signed the contract worth 438.8bn/- with the MSCL on June 15 this year.
However, she said due to some signs of failure by the firm to execute the project she constituted a special probe team consisting of experts from the Ministry of Works and Transport, the Office of the Attorney General, soldiers from the navy and experts from MSCL.
The probe team established that YÜTEK was neither financially capable nor had experts to execute the contract.
She said the team travelled to Turkey where it established that the company had no shipyard, qualified staff, and financial capacity to execute the project.
“It is not even listed in the Association of Ship Builders in Turkey. I was told that due diligence was done before it was awarded this tender, how could this be possible?” queried the President .
“I have instructed the Minister and the Office of the Attorney General to terminate the contract…My only power was to dissolve the boards by removing chairpersons,” she added.
President Samia ordered Minister for Works and Transport Prof Makame Mbarawa to take affirmative actions against procurement boards that offered the deal to construct five vessels to a ‘ghost’ company.
Speaking on special audit report on the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) at TPA between June 2020 and March this year, President Samia said misuse of funds through tender awards for installing payment systems was uncovered.
The report among other things unveiled that TPA, without consultation with e-Government Authority (e-GA), hired different companies to install an electronic payment system but didn’t deliver despite being paid handsomely in taxpayers money.
The companies involved in the matter include Soft Tech Consultant Limited that was given a contract worth 694m/-, Twenty Third Century System (6.6million US dollars), SAP-East Africa Limited 433,000 US dollars while a consultant engineer was hired at a cost of 31,920 US dollars.
She said, TPA paid a total of 600m/- to the Soft Tech Consultant Limited out of 694m/- agreed for the contract, while the Twenty Third Century System received payment of 4.6million US dollars out of the 6.6m US dollars.
“After receiving payments, their contracts were terminated without delivering services as required, in his report, CAG has recommended actions to be taken but until today, nothing has been done,” she said.
President Samia said she was aware of the syndicate of some TPA officials in the finance department who have tempered with the payment system for their own benefits, a move that causes loss of government collections.
The head of state therefore instructed the Director General of the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) Commissioner of Police Salum Hamduni to ensure actions are taken against those who were implicated in the CAG special audit.
She also called on deliberate efforts to increase revenue collections at TPA for the country to benefit from the available opportunities.
“Statistics show that in the financial year 2019/2020 TPA collected 901bn/-, 2020/21 (896bn/-) and in this year 2021/2022 projections show the possibility of collecting 980bn/-,” she said.
According to her, the figure could go up if the TPA collection system is connected to Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) for mutual understanding.
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