Charles Kazooba
26 October 2009
Nairobi — Uganda has suspended the construction of the national backbone fibre cable after intervention of parliament, which accuses the ICT Ministry of inflating the costs.
Parliament has since 2008 been complaining of irregularities in the procurement of the contractor and inflated costs in the construction of the cable.
In the first phase whose cost is $30 million, about $17 million was spent on gadgets to link communication between different departments.
Another $5 million was spent on TETRA communications system for security measures.
At a cost of $106 million, financed under a loan from the China EXIM Bank, the cable is supposed to be completed by financial year 2011/12.
However, already the second phase is behind schedule.
It is argued that although Rwanda is carrying out a similar project of laying 2,300km (more than what Uganda is doing) connecting 35 main nodes and 350 sites, the cost is just $38 million, and yet it is scheduled to end in just a year.
In addition, Kenya's fibre backbone, which is similar to phase one of Uganda, cost $6 million.
The government has revisited the cable's construction just days after lawmakers overseeing the ICT sector demanded its suspension due to unsatisfactory performance of phase one of the backbone fibre, effectively jeopardising phase two and phase three, until the Auditor-General, concludes investigations into the multimillion dollar project.
Even then, parliament wants to first debate the Auditor-General's findings before they can approve further laying of the cable or altogether terminate the contract signed between government and the Chinese technology giants, Huawei Technologies, which was contracted to construct the 2,130km-long fibre cable.
"We have suspended construction of the second and third phases until the Auditor-General completes investigations. That is what parliament directed and we have to respect that decision," said the ICT Ministry spokesman, David Kirya.
In a letter to the Auditor-General, chairman of the ICT committee of parliament demanded that the former investigate the extent to which specifications in the bills of quantities of the project were followed; the extent to which guidelines for implementing the project were followed; the financial loss caused and tax expenditure regarding the cable.
Nathan Igeme Nabeta, ICT committee chair instructed in an August 20, 2009 letter that, "The purpose of this communication is to request your office to carry out a special audit of phase 1 of the NBI/EGI, and submit a report to the parliamentary committee on ICT within one month to enable phase two of the project to take off."
However, two months later, investigations are still going on.
And it is likely that the delay could also affect the regional interconnectivity between Uganda's national backbone and the regional cables.
Parliament claims the costs for the Uganda cable compared to that of Rwanda and Kenya is exaggerated.
For instance, they say that in Rwanda, one kilometre cable laid cost 16,522 pounds; MTN's cost 10,000 pounds whereas that of Uganda cost 30,800 pounds.
"And yet the quality of cables used is of greater core as opposed to lower core cables used in Uganda.
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