Sunday Monitor front-page story about Speakers’ Ceremonial cars lacks facts and promotes misinformation to Ugandans

AKAMPA Tanbull
Independent Investigator
akampabi@gmail.com

Well, I read the Sunday Monitor’s front line story, “Titled Briefcase Firm Supplied House Luxury” published by a one Isaac Mufumba, on Sunday 12th June 202.
I shared a story with our team of investigators at Tanbull256.com, and some other partner news agencies and they picked keen interest on finding out more especially whether the processes of procurement were followed.
Our team of investigators found out that this article indeed was one sided and either deliberately wanted to taint the image of Parliament or the writer at Monitor never laboured to get facts rights.

To put records straight and clear, Parliament Procurement had done a market survey and had not budgeted for more than 2.8Bn. Call for bidders was done more than 2 times and all those companies that had expressed interest did not make it including Spear Motors which had a bigger bid budget of supplying the 2022 Mercedes- Benz Maybac at 2.9Bn above what Parliamentary Commission had budgeted for.

As if this was not enough, it could not delivered the said ceremonial Vehicles in time yet Parliament wanted these cars before the Swearing in Ceremony of Parliament and the New Government Ministers. Spear motors could only deliver after one year!
This means, it knocked itself out as a potential supplier.
Besides this Spear Motors had issues as a company, in 2017, it was contracted by Parliament to deliver a Mercedes Benz Ambulance to use in the 2017/2018 common wealth event, paid in advance but only delivered the said ambulance in 2021. This bad history of not delivering on time could have also contributed to its knock out!

It is from here that Parliament wrote to PPDA for guidance on how to procure the said ceremonial Vehicles for speakers, since PPDA has the mandate to guide Government on all procurement related undertakings, PPDA gave clearance to Parliament to carry out direct Procurement.

Speakers had spent a year without ceremonial Vehicles and it is from PPDA’s clearance that Contracts Committee of Parliament sat and approved the direct Procurement method.

The Albeity Co. was approved and awarded the contract because it was ready to deliver the specified vehicles at a lower budget of 2.8Bn and in one month.
Albeity has already delivered the Speaker’s Ceremonial Vehicles, even when the payment has not yet been advanced to Albeity. This has proved the company’s efficiency in delivering on time.

The Chief Mechanical engineer of Government under Ministry of Works and Transport has already made his report noting that the vehicles are brand new, operational and complies with the contract technical specifications.

Our investigations have found out that Contract signed with Albeity was cleared by the Attorney General who happens to be the Chief legal mind of all Government contracts.

On page 4 of Sunday Monitor still, where the writer alleges that Albeity has never supplied cars or vehicles any where, this paragraph intends to paint a naive picture that all companies must have been car manufacturing in order to qualify to supply Parliament with automobile! Equally Spear Motors in Uganda, it is not a manufacturer of cars but a marketing and selling agency that even does welding which it can not claim monopoly over.
The lie that the Speakers’ cars will be serviced from Nairobi, does not add up, Albeity even before entering Contract to supply the said vehicles to Parliament already had a working contract with Maybach Motors Ltd, a local company here in Uganda which equally does servicing and maintaining of Mercedes Benz and this is where the same supplied cars will be serviced from.

We have also noted that Albeity Co. offered to deliver these vehicles in one month, it paid all its taxes, freights even before any payment was advanced, now personally I find Albeity a very serious company that treasures and knows how to do business in the new competitive dynamic world.

The Speakers are entitled to these ceremonial Vehicles like any other top ranking Government official or public servant like the Prime Minister, President, Vice President and Benz has always been the standard.

There could be people fighting so hard to bring our Parliament down, but this war of mafia forces will be won by the people of Uganda and Parliament will remain standing.

For God and My Country Uganda.

AKAMPA Tanbull
An Independent investigator, Policy and Political analyst
akampabi@gmail.com