Telkom Kenya has handed over the National Fibre Optic Backbone Infrastructure (Nofbi) to the government, amid a parliamentary inquiry following concerns raised by the Auditor General that taxpayers’ money could be getting lost in the key infrastructure project.
In a report published last month, Auditor General Nancy Gathungu flagged an opaque tendering process that saw Chinese firm Huawei granted an automatic extension on its tender and a Sh1.7 billion payment to begin Phase Two of the project.
According to Ms Gathungu, Nofbi and the County Connectivity Project (CCP) run by the ICT ministry did not have a defined structure for monitoring delivery by contractors paid billions annually.
“The projects do not have a defined structure that allocates responsibility of ensuring delivery by the contractors. No documented inspection and acceptance reports have been provided to support any of the payments made amounting to Sh7.5 billion in respect of Nofbi and Sh1.3 billion paid in respect of CPP over the last three years,” said Ms Gathungu.
Nofbi project
Nofbi is further financed by China’s Export Import Bank through a Sh18 billion loan given out in two tranches; Sh7.7 billion signed in 2012 and Sh11 billion signed in 2016. The project kicked off in 2005 as a government initiative to connect all major towns in the country with high-speed broadband fibre.
Initially, telecommunication service providers including Safaricom and Airtel were invited to participate in a joint deployment. Following months of push and pull, however, the service providers opted out of the project in favour of rolling out their own fibre cables or adopting cheaper lease arrangements.
Phase one works contracted, Huawei Technologies, ZTE and Sagem and connected 28 counties. They took 1,112, 1,342 and 1,771 kilometres respectively. Phase two was expected to cost Sh7.2 billion funded through the Kenyan government and China’s Exim Bank.
The Auditor General has queried repayment of the loan through China’s Exim Bank, stating that hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ funds cannot be accounted for. Telkom Kenya was also summoned before the National Assembly Public Accounts Committee to respond to the Auditor General’s report.
*Construction Today
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