Fresh storm brews over national fibre optic cable project

The government has ditched technical safeguards for proper construction and functioning of the multi-billion national optic fibre backbone infrastructure, Daily Monitor can reveal.

Our investigations show that the original October 2006 turnkey contract between the government and Huawei Technologies Ltd, a Chinese Company, has already been altered three times, the latest being on August 18, 2009 under which some crucial provisions on quality standards have been removed.

Key requirements dropped include pre-shipment inspection to certify quality of cables and other materials in countries of origin and a proviso to inter the fibre cables in ducts conveyed through trenches at least 1.5 metres deep from road surface.

Officials have okayed a trench depth of between 0.8-1 metre.
Payments, which under the original contract, were made in block percentages after completion of agreed works have been revised to be cleared in phases per incremental works.

Shs1.4b for 3,800 poles
Under the latest amendment, Huawei Technologies has been allowed to use $715, 679 (Shs1.4b) to buy some 3,800 wooden poles on which to run onshore sections of the National Data Transmission Backbone and E-Government Infrastructure (NBI/EGI). This, industry experts say, would render the installations vulnerable to vandalism.

It has emerged that the ICT ministry has overturned a recommendation by its IT specialists - which Permanent Secretary Jimmy Saamanya had earlier endorsed - that the higher version, bigger-capacity G.655 96 core cable be used to network the country in subsequent phases of the project instead of G.652 24 core cables.

This followed information availed to bureaucrats that the cost of the lower-capacity 24 core cable, which Huawei Technologies currently supplies at $3, 200 (Shs6m) per kilometer, has over the past couple of years tumbled on the world market on the backdrop of rapid technological innovations.

Daily Monitor understands that another Chinese Company, in May last year, notified the ICT Ministry that it could sell each kilometer-long 24 core cable cheaply at $1, 400 (Shs2.6m), enabling government to save $1, 800 (Shs3.4m) per unit. No decision was taken on the proposal.
Shallow trenches
In an interview on January 21, the pioneer ICT Minister Ham Mulira, whose team negotiated the first contract, said the lower 2009 price quotations for the 24-core fibre cable is because technology changes fast and overtime, earlier products turn cheaper.

“These are different generations of technology and since 2006 (when the turnkey contract was signed), prices have dropped,” he said. He, however, would not say why a provision was not embedded in the original contract to accommodate the anticipated price fluctuations. Official records show that ICT ministry technocrats had warned that phase I cables were laid in shallow trenches (compromising its safety and lifespan); backfilling was incomplete and Mark Stones missing to identify routing of the infrastructure for protection.

Dan Alinage, the Uganda National Roads Authority spokesperson, has confirmed that at the very minimum, all utility/service providers laying underground infrastructure, should bore trenches 1.5 metres deep from the road, not ground, surface. “A bitumen road, done well, has a thickness of one metre. If underground cables are buried in a shallow way, they could be destroyed during maintenance of the road,” he said, adding: “The trenches should be dug 15 metres from the middle of the road.”

Cables in swamps
In an October 29, 2009 Internal Memo to PS Saamanya, a copy of which Daily Monitor has seen, Simon Peter Onyango, then head of the Project Implementation Unit, wrote: “The sections [of the cable] in the swamps have not been well entrenched. Secondly, the cable in these swamps is lying in water. This has a negative effect on the cable. Effort should be made to keep the cable out of water by laying in two concentric pipes.”

This newspaper has learnt that some Ministry of ICT officials around September last year abruptly halted their technical staff from carrying out field surveys to ascertain the appropriate routing, in effect the actual cost, of the communication infrastructure under phase II to connect the countryside, except West Nile.

The decision has reportedly strained working relations between technocrats, who on the one hand feel sidelined/undermined and the decision-makers on the hand, emboldened by long service and experience.
When we tried to reach PS Saamanya to clarify on the emerging issues about the NBI/ENI, his secretary referred us to the Ministry spokesperson, Geoffrey David Kiirya, who advised us to e-mail the enquiries.

However when this newspaper telephoned him on January 13, a day after the e-mail was sent, Mr Kiirya said he had sought, but failed, to get responses from respective officers and “So, I have no comment”.
Dr Mulira, now a presidential advisor on ICT, said in Thursday’s interview that like “all projects”, phase I of the NBI/ENI project constructed under his watch could have had “some flaws” but Uganda in the first place had no say in choosing the contractor, picked by the Chinese government; the project’s financer. He, however, said he had confidence Huawei Technologies would do a clean job on the infrastructure to last 50-100 years.

“When a foreign government gives assistance of that kind, the sourcing of the contractor and procurements are not done locally here,” Dr Mulira said, highlighting the handicaps of bilateral lending. He added: “The optic fibre cable is a benefit to the country in this digital age. It’s something that should be welcomed and any mishaps will be dealt with [during maintenance] but these should not obscure the objectives of the project.”

Information gleaned from ICT Ministry website says the project, whose phase II reportedly commenced discreetly in the wake of a parliamentary freeze, is to “put in place optic fibre infrastructure countrywide to enhance connectivity and transmission of data, voice and video communication”.

The government, represented by Communications and Broadcasting Infrastructure chief, Godfrey Kibuuka and Fan Siyong, the country managing director of Huawei Technologies Company signed the original $127.9 million (Shs243b), inclusive of a $21.3 million (Shs40.5b) ‘book entry’ tax, for installation of the 2,122-kilometre NBI/ENI facility to boost local Internet capacity.

Immediate benefits
The idea being that local bandwidth for electronic communication will be expanded and access to Internet services made cheaper, faster and more efficient across the country. This way, government business could be conducted on line, saving time and costs. Other benefits would include real time on-line consultancy for things such as tele-medicine or auditing books of accounts of foreign multinational companies from the comfort of one’s room here.

China’s Export/Import (EXIM) Bank, following preliminary understandings reached during the 2006 China-Africa summit, provided the loan to finance the three-phase project, money Uganda will have to repay unless waived.
Dr Kibuuka was the key government supervisor for phase I works at a time when the infant ICT ministry, founded largely by staff of the former Uganda Computer Service, was reeling with skeletal staffing which impinged its ability to fully oversee the heavy infrastructure project.
Official investigations found that work to establish five transmission stations in Jinja, Mukono, Bombo, Entebbe towns and the capital Kampala and their networking over 191 kilometres underground, was substandard.
This is after significant sections of the installation between Kampala-Jinja, Kampala-Bombo and Kampala-Entebbe and within the city’s Metropolitan area crumbled shortly afterwards, temporarily disabling digital communication on the system that also connects the 28 ministry headquarters in the city.

The Parliamentary ICT committee, after preliminary inspection, ordered Huawei Technologies to fix the break ups, some blamed on road works and excavation by other utility providers; freeze commencement of phase II of the project and directed the Auditor General to do a value-for-money appraisal of work executed at the time. The findings of that check were sent to Parliament on January 8 and the report that the Auditor General John Muwanga prepared last December, concluded that the work was shabbily done, overpriced and fraught with irregularities.

James Mulebeke, the Huawei Technologies’ assistant director in Uganda, yesterday told Daily Monitor by phone that he was out of the country and unable to comment because “I don’t know what is on the ground”. The AG’s report says the contractors claimed the remedial works, covering Kyambogo-Jinja stretch, partly sub-contracted to Bankshire Technologies Company linked to presidential aide Ibrahim Kaliisa, and on Kawempe-Bombo route as well as the Entebbe stretch, cost an additional $2.2 million (Shs4.1b). Investigators, however, said they were unable to ascertain if the patchwork expenses were as much.

A bureaucrat and a private sector employee, who asked not to be named because they are not authorised to speak on behalf of their employers, separately said Hauwei Technologies had offered to repair the damages at no cost. However, some ICT officials allegedly went ahead and picked money from companies accused of damaging the fibre network but instead of using the funds for the repairs, the unnamed bureaucrats pocketed it. It has emerged that three generators - each reportedly worth Shs45 million - bought to power some of the sites were stolen due to alleged lack of proper sheltering and security.

Immediately, it was decided that site equipment, including generators, should be sheltered in permanent, not the prefabricated structures that Huawei Company erected under phase I. Break ups in the national backbone infrastructure, shortly after being laid, appeared to wake up government to the reality of wanting internal capacity – both human and institutional.To address the lapses, the PIU now transformed into the newly-formed but financially-struggling National Information Technology Authority headed by the Executive Director Alex Lutwama, was constituted as a technical arm to advise and run the country’s entire communication infrastructure.

Specialised training

It is understood that in September 2007, government flew out six young IT professionals on a fast-paced specialised training in China to build local capacity to gain knowledge on setting and utilising IT infrastructure; particularly transmission, data communication and next generation networking. Their trip, which domestically coincided with finishing of work on phase I of the national optic fibre backbone infrastructure, made purging the alleged clutter under the scheme a priority assignment for them. It was while executing this brief that the group made their name while simultaneously courting controversy.

The technocrats, like the MPs, recommended that the contractor halts commencement of works on phase II of the project until the Company rectifies identified anomalies which Dr Saamanya communicated to them on May 27, 2009.

These included installing fully-serviced generators/accessories on sites covered under phase I and technical certification of the quality of cables. Other requirements were for use of 96 core cables under phase II and remedies on previous installations.

Compliance with these provisos, the PIU officials suggested, should be independently confirmed by government-contracted external supervisor(s) before a new phase of the project begins. “As per guidelines from Uganda National Roads Authority, the Ministry of ICT maintains that the cable depth should be a minimum of 1.5 metres as stipulated,” Dr Saamanya wrote.

This was not to be the case and officials say in many ways, the PS appears to have made a U-turn on agreed technical specifications, culminating in the third addendum to the turnkey contract. Daily Monitor has learnt that none of the pre-conditions has been met yet ongoing phase II works, officially denied by ICT officials, have reached far and wide in the countryside - from Kumi in the east, connecting via Gulu town to Elegu Police post at the Uganda/Sudan frontier and to Mbarara/Bushenyi Districts on the western flank. Dr Ham Mulira is optimistic that the infrastructure will function well with proper maintenance.