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"speaker_name": "Sen. Dullo",
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"content": "Section 17 of the Office of the Attorney General Act obligates the Government Ministries to seek the approval of the Attorney General before procuring the services of an external legal consultant. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the Committee also noted with concern the opaque manner in which procurement under MES project was done. Article 227 (1) of the Constitution provides that when a state organ or any other public entity contracts for goods and services, it shall do so in accordance with the system that is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost effective for the investigations. Therefore, clearly, you will see that the Ministry sought the service of the legal firm before obtaining the authority from Attorney General’s Office. Mr. Speaker, Sir, if you look at the Report, you will see that the advert for this particular project is that the contractors who were supposed to apply for this contract were to be original manufacturers. However, we found out as a Committee that there are some contractors who were not original manufacturers, for example, General Electric (GE) East Africa Services Limited. General Electric East Africa Services, which was not original manufacturers, applied for the contract and they got it. There are instances where you will find that some of the companies that obtained powers of attorney to sign those contracts much later after the contracts had been signed. Another important issue to note relates to Note 7 under comprising radiology equipment. This equipment was delivered by GE East Africa Services Ltd. The tender required original equipment manufacturers, but GE East Africa, a subsidiary of the original manufacturers, bid on its own name, was awarded the tender and signed the contract in contravention of the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act, 2015. The Act requires that the tender evaluation be conducted according to the criteria set out in the tender document. In this case, GE East Africa should have been the original equipment manufacturer. It is important to note that the number of faults recorded was higher in the equipment they supplied. Indeed, the PKF Report stated that the number of equipment breakdown with regard to radiology equipment in 2018 increased from 918 faults to 1,291 faults. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the GE East Africa were not cooperative in their submissions. They consistently lied to the Committee that they had power of attorney from its parent company General Electric based in Netherlands, but were unable to produce the alleged power of attorney. After three consecutive sessions, they finally admitted that they did not have the power of attorney and ordinarily had the right to bid due to their affiliations with the parent company. The Committee notes that, that was false because being a subsidiary does not bequeath upon a subsidiary the same standing as the parent company because these are two distinct legal entities. Mr. Speaker, Sir, when GE appeared before us, they severally came with their lawyers. The first time when they appeared before the Committee, they said that they had power of attorney to have signed the contract. We gave them 10 minutes because they requested for 10 minutes, so that they could go and bring the power of attorney. Unfortunately, they came and requested for a week to go and work on it. We gave them a week. On several sessions, they appeared before us, they had excuses for not having the The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}