Firms fight for City Hall ghost workers IT contract
Seven Seas Technologies CEO Mike Macharia. Photo/FILE
What you need to know:
Seven Seas Technologies has petitioned the High Court to reverse a decision by the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board (PPARB) which awarded the tender to BCX Kenya Limited, a rival IT firm.
Seven Seas has cried foul over a decision by PPARB to annul award of the tender, and its transfer to rivals BCX Kenya Limited.
The firm claims it had been fairly awarded the tender by Nairobi City County in March this year after which BCX filed a request for review of the tender before PPARB.
Seven Seas Technologies, one of Kenya’s biggest privately-owned IT firms, has moved to court to fight for a Sh211 million Nairobi County tender for installation of a data centre intended to among other things help to weed out ghost workers.
The company has petitioned the High Court to reverse a decision by the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board (PPARB) which awarded the tender to BCX Kenya Limited, a rival IT firm.
The matter set for mention on October 23 is before High Court Judge Justice Weldon Korir.
“PPARB is to file its submissions 14 days from today. BCX are at liberty to file a reply and submit it before the mention date,” said the judge in a ruling on Thursday.
Seven Seas has cried foul over a decision by PPARB to annul award of the tender, and its transfer to rivals BCX Kenya Limited.
The IT firm claims it had been fairly awarded the tender by Nairobi City County in March this year after which BCX filed a request for review of the tender before PPARB.
Part of the evidence it intends to use in the suit is the letter from the Governor’s office confirming award of the tender to Seven Seas.
The county government intends to use the data centre to end manual operations which have cost the city over Sh100 million every month in fraudulent dealings and payment of salaries to ghost workers.
The facility is to include a health management system to co-ordinate the county’s 85 healthcare facilities, an e-payment module to ease bill payments, a human resource management system among other features.
Deputy Governor Jonathan Mueke last month said that the facility was expected to be up and running by December next year, but that timeline will now depend on how fast the dispute is settled in court.
BCX had withdrawn its request for a review of the tender award a month after filing it, but PPARB declined to endorse the withdrawal and consequently awarded the tender to it.
“Once the withdrawal was filed by BCX, the board did not have any jurisdiction to hear any issue arising from the application. Its decision delivered on April 11 being outside the law is a nullity,” said Seven Seas through their lawyer Njoroge Regeru.
Mr Regeru has further faulted PPARB for compelling BCX to prosecute its request for review of the tender when it was no longer interested in it.
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