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ACB cancels K7m Mwanza District Council masks deal

The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has stopped Mwanza District Council from proceeding with the procurement of K7 million-worth cloth face masks following irregularities in the process.

In a letter dated March 2 2021 signed by ACB acting-director general Elias Bodole, the graft-busting body said the decision to cancel the procurement process was made following a monitoring exercise it conducted last month.

The bureau said its inspection at Mwanza District Council on February 25 observed that requirements for suppliers to have a business licence and a taxpayer registration certificate to participate in the procurement processes was ignored.

ACB also said it found that the council had split the process into two parts of cloth supply and tailoring services, a move tantamount to bid splitting.

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Following the splitting, the ACB stated that the move could lead to implementation challenges, leading to compromising quality of the face masks as well as creating room for corruption; hence, compromising quality of the face masks.

When contacted for further clarity yesterday, ACB principal public relations officer Egrita Ndala referred the matter to Mwanza district commissioner (DC) Malango Botomani.

The DC confirmed the cancellation, but asked for more time to get details as she said she was coming from a meeting.

Mwanza was among 35 local government councils allocated a share of K1 billion for the procurement of cloth masks for distribution to the less privileged as part of enforcement of Covid-19 precautionary measures.

The bureau had written district (28), city (four), municipal (two) and town (one) councils on February 8 2021 that it would undertake the monitoring exercise as part of an agreement with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development.

Reads in part the letter: “This is one of the measures for the prevention of corruption in accordance with ACB mandate in Section 10 (1)(a) of the Corrupt Practices Act and also in line with the memorandum of understanding the bureau signed with Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development in 2019 to collaborate efforts in the prevention of corruption.”

A source at Mwanza District Council told The Nation that when ACB officials visited the council last Thursday, they ordered the cancellation of the procurement process right away.

“It [the communication from ACB] is not surprising because when they [ACB officials] visited the council, they said we should cancel the processes because they noted the irregularities. However, we were told that they would officially write the council,” said the source.

The source said Mwanza District Council was allocated K7 million for the cause and that the money is still intact.

The cancellation of the procurement process comes barely weeks after DCs and chief executive officers in all 35 councils were interdicted to pave the way for an audit into the expenditure of K6.2 billion Covid-19 response funds widely feared to have been mismanaged.

In his February 14 2021 National Address on the War on Covid-19, President Lazarus Chakwera directed all controlling officers and cluster heads of Covid-19 response teams to submit expenditure reports or risk being suspended for non-compliance.

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