City Hall's Sh278m garbage tender award under scrutiny

City Hall is yet again on the spot for awarding a firm a Sh278 million two-year contract for garbage collection in the city centre to a company with no experience in waste management.

Aende Group director Derrick Aende, appearing before a Nairobi County Assembly's Environment Committee on Tuesday, admitted that when his firm bid for the tender, it had no prior experience in garbage collection.

“The company had no prior experience in garbage collection but the personnel had,” said Mr Aende, adding that the firm had only 15 secretariat members and 52 stewards against a required 200 stewards to clean the city centre.

It was also revealed that the company, which beat three others, had only been in existence for only 78 days as opposed to at least one-year experience required for such tenders.

'FLOUTED LAW'

Interested firms were required to have between one and five years of experience in waste collection and transport among other qualifications, according tender evaluation documents.

Aende Group was registered on June 6, 2018 and on September 18 won the tender which was advertised on August 24, 2018, before signing the deal with the county on October 2.

The firm beat Creative Consolidated System, a firm that had been collecting garbage within the city centre since 2013 with a bid of Sh316.9 million. Kemnest Investment and Janel Agencies had the lowest bid at Sh190.7 million.

The committee said that the tendering process flouted all the public procurement laws and was marred in illegalities, key among them missing documents.

ANOMALIES

But Nairobi Environment Chief Officer David Makori defended the company, saying that all the documents that were needed at the technical evaluation stage were in order.

“I have gone through the documents and all the technical operations are in order,” Mr Makori told the committee.

The committee led by Komarock MCA John Kamau also heard that the company had audited accounts dating back as far as December 2017 yet the firm was registered on June 6, 2018.

The revelation came after Minority Chief Whip Peter Imwatok queried why the company had presented a financial statement for the year ending December 31, 2017 yet it had not been registered.

It was also revealed that the company had used another firm’s National Environment Management Authority (Nema) certificate to bid for the tender.

But the director said that the NEMA certificate is only issued to a vehicle involved in the collection of the solid waste and not to an individual company.

Mr Aende admitted that his firm has no garbage collection vehicles but leases from other companies.

“I used their certificate because I had a contract with them that we will hire their trucks to do the work.,” he said.

The director said the firm has so far received payments of Sh25 million from the county government for solid waste transport, stewards and personnel protection equipment since October last year.