Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (ESCOM) has supplied is said to have offered tender to foreign companies to supply different Electricity components which would have best supplied by local companies.
The revelation is in total disregard to directive by the President Lazarus Chakwera during his policy brief where he directed that all MDAs should buy from Malawi Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
Our sources close to the deal told us that the decision by ESCOM to award tenders to foreign companies is killing Malawi business.
“Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi’s invitation of international companies to compete bidding for a tender to supply products leaving local tenders that have already been submitted by some Nationals is very strange and many tend to wonder how possible the state owned company could be inviting international companies leaving out our local companies which have already shown the capacity to meet the requirements,” wondered our source.
He said that they know that it will be difficult to defraud the parastatal using local entrepreneurs hence the decision to call for an international thief who can properly execute their fraud in tandem with their protracted cash gate style.
Some of the items which the foreign bidder wants to supply include ; 11 kv distribution transformers, conductors, cables, aerial bundled conductors, bolts and nuts, steel wires, steel items, various connectors, airbreak switch and circuit breakers.
Our source wondered that Escom is doing this at a time when government and other development partners are continuously banging heads on how best the country will create one million jobs for the youth and women who just loitering around the streets in cities and semi-urban towns across the country.
There was no immediate reaction from ESCOM authorities on the matter.
It is not long ago when some greedy Malawians working for some parastatal corporations in the country have been dismissed for abuse of public financial resources with some even dragged to court to account for what they have plundered.
Parastatal bodies such as Escom, Mera, MBC and Tobacco Commission are among some of the bodies not spared from the list of those organisations where various degrees of plunder were recorded ranging from finance, property (vehicles) sexual abuse and nepotism, just to mention but a few.
Escom and Mera topped the list of parastatals giving dubious contracts to some individuals with questionable characters in our society, no wonder some former CEO are now battling for their freedom in courts with several counts to be cleared in their court files.
