Fresh rot revealed in national ID deal
President Museveni displays the first issued Ugandan national ID earlier this year.
In Summary
Foul smell. Equipment stolen or rotting but government wants more money for cards that might not work.
Equipment worth billions of shillings bought to make
national identity cards is rotting away or has been stolen but
government now wants MPs to approve more than Shs100 billion in extra
funding to complete the project
Details of the extra funding request emerged in
Parliament yesterday, a day after this newspaper reported that German
firm Mühlbauer Technology Group, hastily contracted in March 2010
outside official procurement methods at the behest of President
Museveni, had only produced 400 IDs despite down payments to produce at
least 21 million cards.
At a crunch meeting in Parliament yesterday
between lawmakers and a team of top government officials running the
bungled national ID project, it emerged that the firm has so far
received €47m (about Shs161 billion at current exchange rates) out of
the €64m project.
It was also revealed that, contrary to earlier
reports at the signing of the deal, the German firm was only required to
provide equipment, software and training, not to produce the cards.
To actually give Ugandans national ID cards,
government will require an extra Shs118 billion within the next three
years, on top of Shs58 billion the country owes the German firm, the
Executive Director of the National Information Technology Authority, Mr
James Saaka told MPs yesterday.
This will put the total amount required at about
Shs337 billion, more than five times what it cost Kenya and Tanzania to
provide ID cards for their larger populations.
That figure could be higher after MPs heard that equipment,
including cameras and computers bought to collect bio-data had been
rendered obsolete after collecting dust in the warehouses of the Works
Ministry in Entebbe, while some had been reported stolen.
The equipment supplied by Mühlbauer was used ahead
of the February 2011 polls by the Electoral Commission to collect
bio-data for a reported 5.5 million new voters who had been expected to
receive the first ID cards.
MPs heard yesterday that at least 30 laptops and
746 cameras have since gone missing. Of 4,065 pieces of equipment, 2,483
were still reported “present and working” while 1,582 were reported as
lacking components, according to a report the Internal Affairs Ministry
prepared for the MPs.
Mr Saaka’s submission that Mühlbauer was only
contracted to supply equipment and not cards prompted MPs to question
the authenticity and source of the 400 IDs that have so far been issued
out to senior government officials including President Museveni and
Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi.
“Those cards are fake,” Kigulu County MP Edward
Baliddawa said yesterday. “Let us put the country ahead of all personal
interests; what is clear in this whole ID thing is personal interest.”
Although he admitted that the project was behind
schedule, Dr Steven Kagoda, the permanent secretary in the Internal
Affairs ministry, said the project could be rescued if MPs approved the
extra funding.
MPs, however, questioned the call to throw good
money after bad, pointing out that the country had not received value
for its money.
MPs also accused Mr Kagoda of failing to implement a
2009 presidential directive shifting implementation of the creation of a
national population databank, from which personal IDs would be created
from Internal Affairs to the ICT Ministry.
The political interference that ring-fenced the
tender from competitive bidding is a throwback to an earlier tender that
was aborted due to meddling by rent-seeking politicians and is likely
to leave the country with a very expensive project which might not be
compatible with ID cards from other EAC member states (see box).
