KEMSA scandal: Trail of documents reveals how Ksh.3.7B tender was bungled

The axe that fell on the leadership at the Ministry of Health and KEMSA comes at the tail end of a bungled Malaria nets procurement that puts the lives of millions at risk and that sees the country risk losing hundreds of millions of shillings.

The Ministry of Health's Principal Secretary, KEMSA CEO and Chairman as well as the board were sent packing as the President begins implementing changes at the drugs agency.

A look at the trail of documents on the bungled tender yields pointers on just why the purge spread from the authority to the parent ministry.

Less than 24 hours after President William Ruto made a promise to “clean up KEMSA, no matter what it costs,” his broom swept across the spectrum of the Ministry of Health.

Principal Secretary for Health in charge of Public Health and Professional Standards, Dr Josephine Mburu is out, so is KEMSA Board Chairman Daniel Ronoh, while the agency’s CEO Terry Ramadhan stands suspended.

The changes at KEMSA follow a trail of transactions that saw Kenya lose a Ksh.3.7 billion Global Fund tender to supply the ministry with over 10 million insecticide treated nets for mass distribution later in the year.

For former Principal Secretary Dr. Mburu, her actions to interrupt the process of tendering led to a mess in the procurement process.

In a letter dated February 21 this year, Dr. Mburu wrote to KEMSA CEO Terry Ramadhani pointing out what she said were inconsistencies in specifications for the nets in the Global Fund tender.

In her letter, the PS indicated that: “The specification...on technology misses the requirement number 2 “synergist piperonyl Butoxide(PBO) LLINs - Combination nets, which is inconsistent with specifications that were shared by MOH-DNMP.”

A day later, on February 21, Ms. Ramadhani acted on the PS’s instructions, writing: “In view of this and in order to rectify the error that has been identified before closure of tender scheduled on 23rd February 2023, we have extended the tender closing date by another 14 days to close 10th March 2023, to allow room for clarifications, modifications of tender and submission of the same.”

The Global Fund, in a rebuttal on February 24, 2023, dismissed the justification for the PS’s change of specifications, insisting: “The nets being procured are pyrethroid and not PBO, therefore the requirement for the PBO’s should not be included in the tender document.”

At the tail end of the procurement process, two out of the 16 companies listed, Partec East Africa limited and Shobikaa Impex Ltd emerged as KEMSA’s pick to do business with.

The same were however found to have failed to meet the mandatory requirements by the Global Fund, leading it to take over the procurement itself and in the process denying Kenya close to Ksh.400 million in earnings from the tender.

The KEMSA outgoing leadership, the Chairman and the CEO, in an interview on Citizen TV however defended their actions vehemently.

Former Chairman Daniel Ronoh said: “We went fishing, we do procurement warehousing and distribution, they gave us a job to do. With the timelines, we missed a bit of procurement, so we are saying we are doing the warehousing, the distribution, the bit of procurement we have agreed with them because of the timelines.”

Ex-CEO Terry Ramadhani stated: “We stand by those decisions, because if you look at the detail of it, they were responsive. We may differ on the detail of what exactly is it that they have looked at and that whole comprehensive report has been done, but we stand by the evaluation that we did and we agreed with them, that since there is this query that has been raised here and here, if we redo we won’t be able to do it on time.”

Another nail in their proverbial coffins may have been their agreement with the tender evaluation committee that shortlisted Partec East Africa Ltd and Shobikaa Impex.

The Global Fund's action to move the tender to Wambo.org was informed by the tender evaluation committee's failure to apply evaluation criteria consistently to all bidders.

Four individuals from the committee; Antony Chege, Martin Wamwea, Cosmas Rotich, and Lenson Kariuki, were among the group suspended in Monday's Presidential action.

The removal of the immediate former leadership of KEMSA is perhaps the first step in cleaning up the agency that has for years been the centre of scandals and mismanagement, the most recent case being the stock out of essential health products and technologies that has left millions of Kenyans exposed.