RUSAGARA MUVUNANKIKO Valens
The City of Kigali faced tough questioning from Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday, 2 July 2026, after it struggled to justify accepting a road-sweeping lorry that fell well short of the technical criteria laid out in its own procurement contract.
The session formed part of PAC’s review of the Auditor General’s report for the 2024/25 financial year. That report found that the city had tendered for a sweeper vehicle against 25 specific technical criteria, yet the machine eventually delivered met only nine of them a gap that went unchallenged when the vehicle was formally received.
Committee members pressed city officials on why equipment falling so far below agreed standards had been signed off at all.
Kigali City Manager Stella Kabahire, conceded that the vehicle had not fully complied but pushed back against the Auditor General’s numbers. She maintained that only four criteria had genuinely been unmet, insisting the rest concerned internal technical features not visible from the outside and requiring manufacturer explanation. She noted the supplier had not been paid for whatever was missing.
Committee members were not persuaded. PAC Chairperson Valens Muhakwa put it bluntly: officials had drawn up the specifications themselves, so their failure to enforce them made little sense. He also questioned how a vehicle could be accepted if inspectors had not first verified whether the disputed “hidden” features were even present.
MP Liliane Umutesi echoed the scepticism, pointing out the apparent contradiction: if certain features really were concealed, that would mean the inspection team had signed off on the lorry without confirming their existence in the first place.
Backing the audit findings, the Deputy Auditor General told the committee that the official inspection record showed just nine of the 25 requirements satisfied, with the remainder logged as “not applicable.” He also flagged a significant weight discrepancy the contract specified a vehicle of 12,970 kg, whereas the one delivered weighed 11,170 kg and noted that the refund secured from the contractor had been calculated solely against the missing weight, ignoring the other unmet specifications.
On separate concerns that the lorry showed signs of prior use, Kabahire attributed the mileage to its transport from Dar es Salaam to Kigali and to training sessions the supplier ran for city staff.
PAC remained unconvinced that the explanations addressed the core problem: weak procurement oversight. Muhakwa asked pointedly whether it should ever be acceptable for a contractor to deliver equipment diverging from agreed specifications and still have it waved through.
The city administration admitted to shortcomings in its procurement practices and pledged corrective action.
The episode compounds broader concerns in the Auditor General’s report about the city’s stewardship of public resources notably that only 60% of the Auditor General’s recommendations had been implemented, well below the 80% threshold considered satisfactory.
Muhire Obed
