House committee probes IEBC devices

The National Assembly Public Accounts Committee is expected to meet with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) officials.

The committee in the morning met the IEBC director of voter registration Immaculate Kassait on the special audit report and later in the afternoon set to meet the former director of finance and procurement Edward Karisa.

On Tuesday, the committee grilled former IT director Dismas Ongondi who revealed that he had warned the commission against using Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits and Electronic Voter Identification Devices (EVID) in the last General Elections.

The former IEBC IT boss also revealed that for the BVR and EVID kits to be used in the 2017 polls, their charging systems must be improved to avoid them from failing.

PAC chaired by Nicholas Gumbo is probing why the kits procured by IEBC in August 2012 from Canada, through a government-to-government deal at 7.2 billion shillings, failed in the last poll despite costing nearly twice their allocated budget.