PAC grills former IEBC IT boss over graft allegations

Former IEBC information and technology director was on Tuesday grilled by the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) over the questionable purchase of poll kits in the last election.

While appearing before PAC chaired by Nicholas Gumbo, Dismas Ongondi was questioned on why IEBC imported biometric voter registration kits and electronic voter identification devices that failed in the last poll.

Ongondi, however, said that he has a pending court case on the same procurement issue and his sacking hence could not testify before PAC as it might jeopardize the court case.

On his part, Gumbo noted the committee would only deal with the process used to procure the poll machines based on an audit report on the last General Election.

This comes after Kenya bought BVR and EVID kits from a Canadian firm via a government-to-government deal in August 2012 at Sh7.2 billion, which was close to double the initial amount budgeted for.