Govt mum on new passport contract
The Malawi Government is keeping under wraps finer details of the procurement processes that led to the identification of E-Tech Systems as the new passports supplier to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services.
In an interview yesterday, Immigration Department director general Charles Kalumo said the Attorney General (AG) was better-placed to explain as “the department does not deal with procurement laws”.
“The department only prints and issues passports. If you are asking about the law, then I would prefer you speak to the AG,” he said.
AG Thabo Chakaka Nyirenda yesterday did not pick our phone calls on several attempts.
But in a written response yesterday, Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Authority (PPDA) public relations manager Kate Kujaliwa said they did not handle the contract.
She said: “Please, check with the [Immigration] Department on the thresholds. Not all procurements come to PPDA, but only those above the procurement and disposal entities [PDEs] threshold [do].”
Effective July 1 2023, the PPDA revised the thresholds for procurement of goods, works and services, citing the prevailing economic environment and the need to increase operationalisation of decentralised management of public procurement.
A notice dated June 22 2023 signed by PPDA director general Edington Chilapondwa said PDEs and their qualified staff had been grouped based on their capacity to manage particular procurement thresholds.
“Notwithstanding the upward revision of thresholds, Open Tender remains the default method of procurement in line with Section 37 (10) of the PPDA Act.”
“The use of a procurement method other than Open Tender, or in the case of consultancy services, a method other than Request for Proposals [RFP] is subject to prior approval by the director general,” read sthe notice.
Under the new thresholds, the Immigration Department as a procurement threshold of K500 million for consultancy services which fall under the RFP for local consultants only.
On the other hand, the department’s procurement threshold for works is K2 billion whose value range falls under the national competitive bidding using the works standard bidding document.
But an inside source yesterday said there was no sitting to vet E-Tech Systems as the new contractor to deal with the passport crisis at the department.
On the status of passport printing, Kalumo said the department is now importing passport books from Japan and some place in the “Far East”.
He said what matters most is that their services are now back up and that the department is out of crisis, months after the passport issuance system was hacked.
However, passport printing restarted in Lilongwe and is yet to resume in other departments key satellite offices such as Blantyre and Mzuzu.
Ministry of Justice spokesperson Frank Namangale told The Nation on Sunday that government has engaged E-Tech Systems as the new passport system supplier to address the passport crisis at the Immigration Department.
Malawi has experienced passport issuance challenges ever since the AG’s office in December 2021 cancelled a $60.8 million (about K103.3 billion) TechnoBrain contract due to alleged poor handling of the contract.
