That accusation was made this week by the current minister of ICT Aggrey Awori against his predecessor as he (Awori) was appearing before the Parliamentary Committee on ICT investigating the matter.

 

The ongoing investigation follows reports that have caused public anger that some sections of the cable which is supposed to provide cheap and fast internet connectivity to government and private business operators are broken.

 

The National Backbone Infrastructure (NBI) is a government of Uganda project whose major role is to lay fibre optic cable that links the entire country to the Submarine sea cable with the view of delivering fast and cheap internet connectivity to both government and private users.

 

The contract of laying the cable was awarded to a Chinese company Huwei Technologies after the Uganda government secured a loan from a Chinese-state controlled bank.

 

Awori accused Muliira's regime for certifying shoddy work by Huwei when they handed them a certificate of completion for the first phase of the project which was reportedly badly done, before the ministry officials could carry out a thorough supervision of the job done.

 

The first phase of the project, which cost US $30m, is said to have involved

 

Laying the cable in Kampala and was hurried done in an attempt to beat the deadline for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) that took place in November 2007.

 

"During the CHOGM rush, government made flawed decisions like granting a certificate of completion to the company," Awori said.

 

As MPs queried ICT ministry officials for the loopholes and lax supervision, they ordered for an investigation into the work of Huwei by the Auditor General of Government and the office of the IGG. The company is reported to have defied an order by the ICT ministry to put a halt on the second phase of the project which is supposed to take internet to upcountry areas.

 

Awori told the committee that even though Huwei have been ordered to stop, he cannot deny them money when it goes directly to the company from the Chinese bank which holds the project's account.

 

MPs say that although the ministry officials say they stopped the work on phase two, work is still going on in many areas of the country with the same poor standards that were exhibited in phase one.

 

ICT ministry officials led by the Permanent Secretary Jimmy Samanya, tried to absolve themselves by telling MPs they had agreements on the amount of money to do repairs on phase one.

 

The MPs suspected the officials might have been lying and demanded they produce the said documents.

 

It appears though that the documents were not in existence owing to the exchange this reporter heard between the PS who was telling someone on phone called Lubega to quickly compile a report on the matter.

 

The cost to Ugandans is quite significant and comes in the form of having to shoulder the burden of repaying a loan that was used for doing shoddy work, but also in terms of delaying the rollout of fast internet.

 

While many businesses in neighbouring countries are beginning to get hooked to their national internet backbone infrastructure, Ugandans may have to wait many more years or be forced to pay for privately owned fast internet services that are still far out of reach for many people.

 

This will undermine competitiveness of many internet service-based industries like telecommunications, banking, education and others.

And according to MP Isaa Oto, Samanya and his two colleagues were detained in Parliament because they lied to the committee that Huwei had complied with the recommendations of the Parliamentary committee to halt the work. Otto said he recently detected progress on the Backbone in Matugga - Luwero district, by workers of Huwei.