Rwanda Transportation Development Agency boss accused by whistleblowers of vested interest in delays on important Burundi-Rwanda road.
A group of whistleblowers from within the Rwanda Transport Development Agency has sent a stack of documents to The Rwanda Focus alleging possible misuse of public funds in a project to renovate and asphalt the multinational road linking Rwanda and Burundi, the Gisiza-Rubavu Road.
Due to irregularities they cite, work on this road has stalled for over a year now, and the concern is that the funders – the African Development Bank – may altogether withdraw the monies for the 48-kilometer highway.
The first, and most obvious irregularity occurred when RTDA Director General Guy Kalisa wrote a letter – a copy of which we have – to the resident representative of the African Development Bank, AfDB, requesting for non-objection for award of the contract to a Chinese company called Hunan Road & Bridge Corporation. The letter is dated 12 August 2014.
In response the Resident Representative, Gabriel Negatu, among other things wondered why the non-objection request – presumably so that Hunan Road and Bridge Corporation would commence the work – came more than 7 months after the bids were opened, on 23 December 2013. This, according to tendering procedures, is a very long time to ask for a non-objection and it is irregular, and “anyone doing so would know AfDB wouldn’t give it.” AfDB asked for clarifications.
It was at this point, according to a whistleblower memo we have, that Guy Kalisa decided to impose his views on the evaluation committee working to respond to the AfDB clarification request. “It seems the RTDA director made the request for non-objection in an ‘abnormally long’ period intentionally, knowing this would open the door for him to slot in a company of his preference, the Sinohydro Corporation.”
This was even after members of RTDA evaluation team prepared a memo for Kalisa detailing a response to AfDB’s request for clarifications, showing why Hunan Road & Bridge was still the most suited company, technically and cost-wise, despite the RTDA chief’s late request for non-objection. We have a copy of the memo.
According to the whistleblowers, it came as a complete surprise to them when Kalisa told the evaluation team to stop everything they were doing, suggesting that AfDB did not want the award to go to Hunan Road & Bridge Corporation, or even to KCS International (another bidding company whose tender showed they too qualified). The RTDA director general instead stressed that AfDB “prefers Sinohydro Corporation Ltd”.
This, according to the bids we’ve seen, would among other things cost 10 billion more francs than Hunan Road & Bridge’s bid, which came in at a total of Frw 32,295,082,869 minus taxes.
According to the whistleblowers the RTDA boss “tried to force” the evaluation team to rewrite the report, proposing instead that the award goes to Sinohydro. When The Rwanda Focus called the RTDA director general for his comments on these seeming irregularities, he declined to offer even a single comment, only remarking that since the bidding process hadn’t yet concluded, he couldn’t, by law, make any comment on it.
The whistleblowers further allege that when they declined “to doctor” the report to favor Sinohydro, Kalisa brought in an outside consultant to do it. “With Rwanda standing to lose up to Frw 10 billion, we could never participate in writing such a report, and so the DG could only bring in outsiders to do what he wanted!” concluded the whistleblowers.
