Renowned Human rights activist, Undule Mwakasungula has challenged the board for the Electricity Generation Company (Egenco) to swiftly act on staff for the parastatals suspected to be involved in the K6.7 billion procurement scam at the company.
In a statement issued Saturday, 14th, April, 2024, Mwakasungula observed that holding accountable those implicated in the corrupt practices at the company will go along way in discouraging further misconduct by other employees not only for Egenco but in all parastatals in the country.
“Taking such measures of accountability will demonstrate the current government’s commitment to addressing issues raised in the audit and will in the end help in rebuilding public Trust in the management of parastatals in the country”, said Mwakasungula in a statement.
His remarks come after a forensic report dated 13th February, 2024 carried out by Mwenelupembe, Mhango and company has uncovered serious procurement irregularities at Egenco between January 2017 and March, 2024.
According to the audit report, the alleged miss procurement is said to be connected to unissued items in stock, unauthorised requisitions and rampant single sourcing of materials and services instead of sourcing through national competitive bidding (NCB),among others.
The report also details that from the K6.7 billion query, Egenco has K447.6 million unissued stock from 2018 purchases, another K224 million from 2018/19 purchases, K479.5 million from 2019 purchases and K679.9 million for 2020 purchases, all totalling about K1.8 billion.
Other grey areas according the to the report, relate to gross financial mismanagement totalling K240.5 million, out of which K16.5 million was given to the former ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), K117 million was the cost of an international training programmes which the company ought to have conducted locally while K106.7 million was conducted for irregular car hires.
Meanwhile Egenco board chairperson Zanga Zanga Chikhosi is quoted in the local media as indicating that the report will be deliberated upon by the various committees of the board’s governance structure whose findings will be forwarded to the full board for appropriate action.