Court stops firm’s rice project in Tana Delta tender row

The High Court has halted a deal in which a private firm seeks to expand rice production on the Tana Irrigation Scheme by 24,000 tonnes every year.

Justice George Odunga on Tuesday issued temporary orders stopping the rice growing deal that Braken Agricultural Limited signed with Tana and Athi River Development Authority (Tarda) after a tender loser, Unifresh Exotics moved to court challenging award of the multi-million-shilling deal to Braken.

Unifresh claims that the award of the tender to Braken was marred by several irregularities and that the rules may have been bent to favour Braken.

Unifresh now wants the High Court to compel Tarda to award it the tender, saying it is more qualified than Braken to run the project.

“The parties will appear before the court for hearing on January 28. The project shall not be implemented until then,” Justice Odunga said on Tuesday.

Tarda and Braken, who have both been sued, are expected to have filed their respective responses by the January hearing before Justice Odunga.

Unifresh has said in its petition that the tender award was done before other bidders for the project were given any detail regarding the outcome of the evaluation process.

The project was to see the expansion of rice production at the Tana Delta Irrigation Scheme from 4,356 acres to 12,355 acres to boost production to at least 24,000 metric tonnes a year.

Tarda had in tender documents said that bidders had to be able to facilitate the expansion, which Unifresh insists is impossible in Kenya.

Despite writing to the authority with several queries, Unifresh claims it only got a response on November 4 informing it that its bid had failed.

“Such capacity is non-existent in Kenya. On October 6, Unifresh attended the tender opening process, and came to learn that additional material to the said tender had been issued only to Braken. Through a letter dated November 4, the authority claimed that Unifresh fell short of criteria,” said Unifresh.