Old airport tender cancelled

The tender for the maintenance of premises at the old Embakasi airport terminal in Nairobi, which was to be awarded to the little-known OneJetOne company, has been cancelled.

Transport minister Chirau Mwakwere, however, said that the leasing of 90 acres of land to the Qatar-based Afro Asia Investment Corporation for the construction of a hotel and conference facilities at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport will go on as planned.

Addressing journalists at his office in Nairobi on Thursday, Mr Mwakwere said the awarding of the tender to OneJetOne was done unprocedurally.

Crucial information

“We did not give a letter of offer to OneJetOne. No contract was signed because there were flaws in the tendering process,” he said.

The minister made the statement in a move to clear the air of secrecy surrounding multi-billion shilling investments in his ministry, including projects at JKIA and the construction of Lamu Port.

Mr Mwakwere said some crucial information that was only given to OneJetOne was not disclosed when Kenya Airports Authority advertised for a firm to take over management of the terminal.

The Transport minister’s statement backed that of Kenya Airways managing director Titus Naikuni, who had said the tender was only for the utilisation of the building but not land.

However, OneJetOne was negotiating with KAA to be allowed to demolish the old terminal and build a modern low-cost one which it was to own and control while sharing revenue with KAA under a “build operate and transfer” arrangement.

According to Mr Naikuni, the national carrier should have been allocated the old Embakasi airport, as had been done for British Airways in London and KLM in Armsterdam. KQ had applied to be allowed to operate the terminal in 2007.

The Public Procurement Oversight Authority, whose mandate is to investigate corruption in public procurement, had written to outgoing KAA managing director George Muhoho warning that the manner in which the deal was being done was not in line with the requirements of transparent tendering.

Mr Muhoho’s contract has expired and his deputy, Mathew Wamalwa, is acting pending the naming of a new MD on Friday. Touted as East Africa’s first low-cost airline, OneJetOne had said it won the deal in a competitive tender that was advertised in the press.

On Wednesday, Mr Mwakwere said OneJetOne had got similar tenders in Sri Lanka and Malaysia but the firm’s “activities went sour”.
“Kenya cannot be used as an experimental ground for an activity that failed elsewhere,” he said.

On the building of a hotel and other facilities at JKIA, the minister said the Afro-Asia Investment Corporation had 18 months to lay ground work.

He, however, declined to disclose the people behind the firm, only saying that they were also involved in similar projects in Cairo, Abidjan and Johannesburg.

Biggest project

Mr Mwakwere said the construction of Lamu Port and roads and railway line connecting it with Ethiopia, Sudan and the Great Lakes Region would be the biggest project in Kenya since colonial times.

He said the project was being spearheaded by President Kibaki, who had ordered that the $45 million (about Sh3.6 billion) recovered from the sale of Nairobi's Grand Regency Hotel (now Laico Regency) be used on the port. The structural design of the port will be done in the next 45 days.