- Raila said the tender with the UK firm was quashed because the company allegedly refused to give Kenyan government officials kickbacks.
- He said the UK-based firm, Stephen Austin, was awarded the tender because of the firm's credibility in printing security related documents.
Image: RAILA ODINGA/X
Opposition chief Raila Odinga has claimed the Kenya Kwanza administration irregularly awarded a lucrative tender for the printing of KCPE tests to a local firm that lacked capacity.
The move, Raila said, eroded the gains that the country had made in securing major reforms in the administration of national exams.
Raila said on Wednesday that the government suddenly terminated the contract that Kenya had entered with a UK-based security printing company Austin Printing Limited.
Addressing the Nation over the alleged Kenya Certificate of Primary Education results fiasco, Raila said the local company was hastily contracted without following procurement laws.
He alleged that the tender with the UK firm was quashed because the company allegedly refused to give Kenyan government officials kickbacks.
''We have established that early this year, the Kenya Kwanza administration suddenly and abruptly stopped this contract just because the UK company refused to give kickbacks,'' he said.
According to Raila, the national examination printing contract was in 2016 awarded to Stephen Austin because of the firm's credibility in printing security-related documents.
''This is a security firm that deals with several exams and other high-stakes documents in different parts of the world. Kenyans wil agree that in that period, sanity returned in the management of exams, with grades that reflected reality,'' Raila said.
Raila claimed that the Kenya Kwanza administration awarded the tender without following the law, examining timeliness and never doing due diligence.
"The Kenya Kwanza administration awarded the tender to a politically correct local company based on Mombasa Road in Nairobi," he said.
This was done even when the government was advised that the local company could not print the exams and also ensure their security and integrity, especially on such short notice.
"Nobody should budge because there were kickbacks involved," Raila claimed.
Raila alleged that the local company was forced to outsource the exam printing services from a company in India, where the exams were printed in a hurry.
''We are also aware that the UK firm whose contract was cancelled declined to provide codes to the many layers of security that had been encrypted to safeguard the integrity of both the KCPE and KCSE," he said.