National Oil Company of Malawi (NOCMA) has been faulted for publishing a notice to award fuel supply contracts without indicating prices.
NOCMA which currently has no chief executive officer and is being led by deputy CEO Helen Buluma has published names of companies to be awarded fuel supply contracts for 2020/21.
Awarded companies include Lake oil Malawi Limited (65,000 Metric Tons of gasoil), Dalbit International (38,539 MT) and Camel Oil (34,414).
Social commentator Mulotwa Mulotwa says it does not make sense for Buluma and the NOCMA board to publish the notice without indicating the prices since the practice has been publishing the prices.
Mulotwa Mulotwa suspects that there are some powerful people supporting the NOCMA boss.
“NOCMA is hiding prices. Helen Buluma cannot be making these decisions alone. All what she does has hallmarks of some form of power behind her.
“In short, the Government people put in power to work for them has changed its mind on objects of the revolution that axed DPP (Democratic Progressive Party).
“This NOCMA deal is a middle finger to all people who toiled for the removal of DPP. How different are you from DPP?” he wrote on Facebook.
Commenters said the notice is useless because it does not indicate prices.
“The purpose of publishing this is so that other bidders and the general public can appreciate fairness of the process. We cannot do that if we cannot see prices. It is not enough to say the evaluations were done on lowest bidder basis,” said one commenter.
The notice for the contracts has been published after months of disagreements between Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority (MERA) and NOCMA.
MERA in January stopped NOCMA from awarding contracts to two suppliers who were identified following bids from 23 companies.
