• Members of the Senate ad hoc committee are inquiring into the Sh63 billion MES project and want the two Kariukis to appear before them next Thursday.
• The five-year contract was signed on October 2, 2017, to interlink all the 98 Level Four hospitals.
Image: FILE
The DCI is investigating the termination of the Sh4.9 billion contract for the deployment of a health IT system to support the Managed Equipment Service programme.
The Senate ad hoc committee is at the same time inquiring into the Sh63 billion MES project and has summoned Attorney General Paul Kariuki and outgoing Health CS Sicily Kariuki to shed light on the matter.
Health PS Susan Mochache controversially terminated the contract with SevenSeas Technologies Limited in November last year.
The deal was about the provision of Health Care Information Technology (HCIT) for MES.
A November 18, 2019, letter from Mochache to the company said Seven Seas "did not have the financial capacity" to implement the project.
“It is now apparent that despite having attained a high-level score in the financial evaluation, your firm does not have the financial capacity to perform the HCIT contract and has been unable to mobilise any funding without GoK Letter of Support,” the letter said.
Yesterday, the firm’s founder and CEO Michael Macharia welcomed the probe. He accused the Health ministry officials of grabbing the contract from him.
“There is a need to establish why there was a rush to terminate the contract after the Senate started investigating MES,” he told the Star.
The project, whose five-year contract was signed on October 2, 2017, was supposed to interlink all the 98 Level Four hospitals and above covered under the MES programme.
Patients were to be interlinked to an e-Citizen Master Patient Records database that would integrate their national IDs and Huduma numbers.
Kariuki, who appeared before the Senate on Wednesday to explain the termination of the contract, declined to divulge the circumstances that led to the premature end of the deal.
She disclosed to the Isiolo Senator Fatuma Dullo-led committee that the matter was under active investigation by the DCI and that she had sought the AG’s advice.
The CS said the ministry terminated the contract after an advisory from Kihara.“I may not be able to speak on this matter because the DCI is on it. I need some time to consult the AG before I come back here with a comprehensive response.”
But this did not go down well with the committee members, who demanded to know why she had not consulted the AG before appearing before them.
“Are you supposed to come here and then go and seek an advisory from AG or are you supposed to seek advice before you come here? There was no need for an advisory. We only requested you to come and shed more light,” Kitui Senator Enoch Wambua said.
Chief State Counsel James Mwenda, who is attached to the ministry from the AG’s office, said he had verbal instructions from his boss not to speak on the subject as he (AG) was willing to appear in person.
This prompted the chair to adjourn the hearing for consultation and shortly thereafter summoned the CS and AG to appear on Thursday next week. Seven Seas boss will appear on Wednesday.
When he appeared before the committee late last year over the IT project, Macharia complained that the ministry and the AG had not issued him with a letter of support to unlock a bank loan to implement the project.
The letter was to help the company get an Sh2 billion loan from a local bank to secure Sh250 million equipment stuck at the Port of Mombasa.
The contractor said the letter had been drafted by the National Treasury and forwarded to the AG for approval but nothing had been forthcoming despite several letters urging him to release the same.
Mochache’s letter said the requirement for an original copy of GoK support letter to the contractor did not feature anywhere in the tender document.
“Instructively, the HCIT contract contains several clauses that were not founded on the tender documents, which imposes obligations that do not conform to the tender documents, more particularly, in regard to the requirement that the ministry provides an original copy of letter of support,” it said.
Yesterday, the CS said, "The PS and I do not have personal interest in this. It is the law that had to be followed. Tell him not to play politics."