Seven Seas wins City Hall ghost staff tender case

Kenyan IT firm Seven Seas Technologies has won a court bid to quash the award of a multi-million shilling tender for setting up a data centre designed to help weed out ghost workers at City Hall.

Seven Seas had appealed the Public Procurement Oversight Authority’s award of the Sh211 million tender to rival company BCX Kenya Ltd.

High Court judge George Odunga has ruled that PPOA’s tribunal overstepped its mandate in reversing Seven Seas’ tender win and awarding it to BCX following a review of the procurement process.

After Seven Seas was declared the winner in March last year, BCX filed a request for review of the tender proceedings.

BCX withdrew the request shortly afterwards, but PPOA went on to review the tender and subsequently strip Seven Seas of its win.

“It is my view that PPOA’s jurisdiction ceased on receipt of the notice of withdrawal by its secretary and any proceedings undertaken subsequent to the same, apart from notification of the parties, were not only unprocedural but also without legal basis,” said Justice Odunga in his ruling.

City Hall intends to use the data centre to end its manual human resources register, which it says costs the county over Sh100 million every month. It is also intended to help weed out ghost workers from the county government.

PPOA had argued in its defence that BCX’s request was merged with another appeal, hence quashing its decision would affect other parties that were also seeking to review the procurement proceedings.

READ: Firms fight for City Hall ghost workers IT contract

The judge, however, said that in the event of consolidation of such matters only the hearing process is merged, but different decisions are made for each application at the ruling.

“In the (PPOA) ruling dated April 11, it was decided that the said requests were consolidated only for the purposes of hearing but the board would deliver separate decisions. It is therefore my view that the quashing of one decision does not necessarily quash the other decision,” the judge ruled.

He said that the review was null, and that any decision that arose from it cannot be allowed to stand.

Conclusion of the case paves way for setting up a database which has been delayed by almost a year. Deputy Governor Jonathan Mueke said in June last year that the project had been earmarked for completion in December 2015, but that the court case would delay it.

Ghost workers

The data centre will include a health management system to co-ordinate the county’s 85 healthcare facilities, an e-payment module to ease bill payments and a human resource management system, among other features.

The human resource management system will come as relief for taxpayers who lose hundreds of millions of shillings to ghost workers estimated to be over 2,400.

Seven Seas’ tender win last year was short-lived as the PPOA review was done a few weeks after it had received a letter from the office of Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero confirming its selection to carry out the project.

Mr Odunga’s ruling gives the IT firm the greenlight to pursue the tender. The judge further warned PPOA and other administrative organs that courts will intervene in the event they over-step their mandate.

“The courts will be no rubber stamps of administrative boards. The administrative bodies and tribunals must act within their lawful authority,” he said.