Engineers' elections: Kagondu calls for fresh polls, cites flawed process

In a statement, 1st Vice President of the Institution Grace Kagondu decried what she termed as a disenfranchisement of members’ right to vote.

She added that the process held on March 21, 2024 saw a section of eligible voters frustrated as they lined up to cast their ballot.

“Many members eligible to vote were frustrated and disenfranchised of their right to vote due to technical failures in the voting platform. By engineering standards, the voting platform was a failure of unacceptable degree,” she said.

Some of the anomalies and serious shortcomings she cited include the alleged pre-selection of candidates before the members could vote.  

“In my case, when I checked my email at about 7.15am to start voting using the link provided via email at 5.45am, I noticed that another email had come in at 6.24am indicating that I had successfully completed the voting session,” Kagondu claimed.

Further, she decried a slow system that took hours to respond. “The system was extremely slow taking up to even 4 hours. During the mock voting held on 12th March 2024 the performance was very different as it took only 2 to 3 minutes to vote.”

Other issues include lack of One Time Pin (OTP) prompts where some users were not receiving the OTPs to access their accounts.

“These issues have greatly affected the transparency, integrity, and validity of the IEK electoral process. The credibility and reputation of the Institution of Engineers of Kenya is now at stake,” Kagondu added.

Following this, Kagondu, who has held the position since 2022, called for a forensic audit to ascertain the credibility of the process.