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A company associated with MP Alfred Agoi is accused of lying to the government over a lucrative contract to monitor vehicles belonging to the National Police Service and the National Treasury.
The company, Kingsway Autowatch which is registered in the country, does not have the capacity to undertake such a colossal contract, gets Sh45 million from the government each month.
Despite the handicap, the MP who sits in the National Assembly courtesy of the Amani National Congress (ANC) have on various occasions failed to deliver on the core mandate and leaving the taxpayer getting little in terms of service.
Moreso, the company has other tribulations that set it completely apart from the job that could also be said to be connected to the laxity by the company.
“This company is a fraud and should not be allowed to win any contract in this country. For example, they have no server in the country. They just have the login rights for the comp[any whose server is in the USA. I just can\’t believe this company can be trusted with a very sensitive internal security contract,” says a former employee of the company that is co-owned by Seth Changilwa, another staunch ANC supporter.
According to the informant, the exposure of the country\’s most sacred internal security docket that involves movement of the police vehicle in the country.
As a pointer, he says that various police mishaps in the country could simply be associated with such laxity from the company that the second-term MP owns.
“This is a real security risk in the country. We have a situation where details of police vehicles shared by third parties in distant countries that even the owners do not have access to. On the other have, we have a system which can be easily manipulated by IT experts and data stolen from Total Kenya. Such reports are passed on to the National Treasury for payments.
Efforts to get the MO, partner Changilwa of General Manager Steve Jumba have not been easy.
In the contract, Kingsway is charged with the responsibility to track and monitor the fuel consumption of government vehicles.
“Kingsway Autowatch Limited is currently providing fleet services to GOK principally The National Treasury and National Police. The fleet services offered are principal: 1. Vehicle tracking 2. Fuel Monitoring As of 2017, Kingsway Autowatch was providing fleet services to about 3,000 vehicles, mostly National Police vehicles across the country.
“Since 2011/2012, Kingsway Autowatch Limited has been providing the following services to GOK: 1. Fitting of trackers for the purposes of vehicle monitoring. Under this service, the Government of Kenya can find out:- a. Location of vehicle i. Real-time location of a vehicle; Location history b. Monitoring driving conditions i. Cases of overspeeding; Harsh braking and a sensor/tracker for the purposes of real-time fuel track,” says the former employee.
However, a firm sub-contracted by Kingsway Autowatch, Priority Mobile Limited but had tagged along with Total Kenya, which is contracted by the government.
Priority Mobile Limited is an emerging technology that develops breakthrough technology for SME’s in Africa. Registered in 2014, Priority Mobile Limited is based in Nairobi, Kenya. Since incorporation, Priority Mobile Limited has worked and developed solutions and offered various services such as IT consultancy, Mobile App development Web applications in the health sectors, public sector ( judiciary and Ministry of Devolution).
Under the agreement, Priority was to design, develop a system that would allow Kingsway Autowatch Limited to upload raw fuel transactions summary in CSV from Total Kenya.
Process the data and make insightful reports that would be presented to NATIONAL TREASURY as part of fuel monitoring reports per their TOR with their client 3. These reports – nearly 20 reports all on fuel and vehicle management
However, in an internal report, it was discovered that Kingsway has no fuel monitoring device. All reports submitted to Treasury are fictitious as there is not a single fuel sensor installed in any of the 3k vehicles.
No proprietary software used to track the vehicles The tracking software utilized by Kingsway Autowatch isn\’t owned by Kingsway, nor is it hosted locally or in Kenya. Instead, they have a subscription which allows them access to the software via cloud.
No data is available on their servers despite billing the government for servers.
Outdated technology Government is granting contract extensions on outdated devices/technology with some devices being some 4-6 years old. Cheaper and more robust technology is available in the market.
In the foregoing, previous tenders have included clauses that uniquely preclude all competitors in Kenya and hands an unfair advantage to Kingsway Autowatch. One such clause includes requiring participants to have 3k vehicles under management.
Communication Authority of Kenya licenses requires companies engaged in tracking of vehicle business to apply for a licence and to retain it, companies are required to pay 0.4% of annual turn over or KShs80,000 whichever is greater. CAK site does not provide a list of approved or currently compliant companies, going by the track record of this company of not honouring their obligations it is quite possible they have not paid this fee in any of the years they have secured a renewal.
In 2018, for example, the fee should be KShs2.88m based on KShs72m revenue reported to KRA. Another requirement that is critical during the tender review is company tax compliance certificate issued by Kenya Revenue Authority
Records indicate that one of the directors isn’t taxed compliant and has not been tax compliant in nearly 4 years a period which Kingsway Autowatch Limited was awarded another tender in 2015/2016 for Phase II of tracking vehicles