Govt defends extra charges in Entebbe airport expansion contract
The Minister of Works and Transport, Gen Katumba Wamala, appears before Cosase on Tuesday. Photo/David Lubowa
What you need to know:
- The Director for Navigation at UCAA, Mr Ayub Soma, says the variation arose after an inspection and validation exercise was done by officials from the European Union.
Government has defended variations in the Shs700 billion project to expand and upgrade Entebbe International Airport.
The Minister of Works and Transport, Gen Katumba Wamala, together with officials from the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (UCAA) were responding to queries raised about a $3.4 million (about Shs12 billion) variation in the cost of the project.
They were appearing before the Parliamentary Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (Cosase).
MPs were concerned that the lead contractors, China Communications and Construction Company (CCCC), are asking for additional funding before completing the project. MPs demanded to know how the extra charges were came about.
The Director for Navigation at UCAA, Mr Ayub Soma, said the variation arose after an inspection and validation exercise was done by officials from the European Union, a key destination for flights out of Uganda.
“It was realised that there were new requirements which Entebbe Airport had to fulfil and these touched on safety and handling procedures for cargo and mail,” Mr Soma said. “It included the modification of processes and there was a change in some kind of infrastructure to fit the EU market. This resulted in the change of scope which we had to take.”
The changes included ensuring safety measures, identifying another contractor, Tristar, to build a bigger and safer fuel hydrant at the airport.
“In 2017, we received, through the government, a company called Tristar that was serving the UN at that time and the proposal that came in from Tristar is to provide a fuel firm of 20 million litres [because] our current capacity is 7.5 million litres,” Mr Soma said.
He added that Tristar’s proposal catered for safety measures, offered for higher storage capacity of fuel to service aircraft at the airport for about a month and the hydrant was to be digitally smart.
Gen Katumba said Entebbe Airport loses a lot of revenue to Kenya, which is preferred for exports of fruits and other perishable cargo.
“Right now, most of our fresh foods are exported through Nairobi... Our products are taken across the border, repackaged and rebranded ‘Made in Kenya’ because our facility wasn’t meeting international standards. The size of the airport wasn’t also sufficient to be taking on some of the aircrafts. And that is one of the reasons it was important that we expand the airport and bring it to international standards,” he said.
However, the shadow minister for Works and Transport on the committee, Mr Yusuf Nsibambi, also MP Mawokota South, said they were less interested in the technical arguments and more in the process.
“For us as an accountability committee were not so much into the engineering [consideration],” Mr Nsibambi said, demanding to know if due process was followed in identifying and awarding the contract to the contractor, China Communications Construction Company.
Gen Katumba said he was not in charge of the ministry at the time of the award of the contract and could not respond immediately.
“Now for me to be able to say what happened in 2012 and to know even how the bilateral [agreement] came into being is difficult. And even if we go round and round, I may not give you a satisfying answer,” he told Parliament.
He added: “It may be asking too much for me to be expected to know its whole origin. Good enough, the people who were there are not dead, they are there. You could call them and possibly ask them. How did we come to this?”
READ MORE:
