Former Tanzania Ports Authority Director General Ephraim Mgawe (nearest to camera) and former Deputy Director General Hamad Koshuma (left) leave the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court after they were charged with abuse of office yesterday.
FORMER Director General of Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA), Ephraim Mgawe, and his deputy, Hamadi Musa Koshuma, yesterday appeared before the Dar es Salaam Resident Magistrate's Court charged with abuse of their positions.
The charge relates to the expansion of Dar es Salaam Port, particularly the construction of berths numbers 13 and 14 under a contract involving a Chinese firm, China Communications Construction Company Limited (CCCCL), at a cost of about 523 million US dollars (over 800bn/-).
Before Kisutu Principal Resident Magistrate Isaya Arufani, TPA's two top ex-officials denied the charge.
They were granted bail on condition of signing a bond of 2m/- and presenting two reliable sureties each. The sureties were required to sign a bond of similar amount each.
They requested the court to adjourn the matter for another mention, pending further investigations. The magistrate granted the request and adjourned the case to August 13.
Before the court had granted bail to the two accused persons, a defence counsel, Mr Samson Mbamba, argued that the offence under which his clients were being charged with was bailable and requested the court to set affordable conditions.
Prosecuting, the PCCB official told the court that the two accused persons committed the offence on December 5, 2011 at the TPA offices in the city of Dar es Salaam.
According to the prosecution, being employed by the TPA as Director General and Deputy Director General (Services), Mgawe and Koshuma, respectively, abused their positions while discharging their respective functions.
It is alleged that the duo signed a commercial contract between the TPA and the CCCCL for construction of berths numbers 13 and 14 at the Dar es Salaam Port without invitation of tenders.
Such an act, the prosecution further alleged, was in violation of the provisions of Section 31 of the Public Procurement Act, No. 21 of 2004 and was intended to obtain an undue advantage for the Chinese construction company.
Early this year, the government cancelled the highly contentious 800bn/- project involving the construction of the two berths after learning that its costs were unrealistic and questionable.
Transport Minister Harrison Mwakyembe was quoted telling the National Assembly while tabling his ministry's budget estimates for the financial year 2014/15, that the earlier estimates by CCCC and China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), which put the cost at 837bn/-, were unreasonably high.
"The costs for the construction of the berths in question pegged at 523 million US dollars (about 837bn/-) was too high and raises too many questions, putting into consideration that projects of that nature elsewhere have been implemented at half the costs indicated here," the minister had said.
Dr Mwakyembe noted further that besides, the project which aimed at constructing bigger berths to allow vessels as big as PANAMAX with the length of 294.13 metres and a width of 12.04 metres was discovered to be unrealistic, as the available space at Dar port would not allow.
"We also discovered that so many other things were not included in the contractor's plan, which made us realise that the contractor had no good intention," he was quoted as saying.
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