Madagascar: civil society denounces a conflict of interest in a public contract for computer equipment

Text by: Laetitia Bezain Follow

4 min

On the invoice for the sale of computer equipment to the Operational Command Center which fights Covid-19 is the name of the Minister of the Interior but also that of ... his wife, director in the company that has provided said material. An investigation is called for.

Publicity

From our correspondent in Antananarivo

The equipment was used to equip the Operational Command Center for the fight against Covid-19, the institution in charge of coordinating the response to the epidemic. On the invoice for these purchases, which was disclosed on social networks, is the signature of the Malagasy Minister of the Interior and Decentralization and that of his wife, commercial director of the IT company that sold this equipment.

The bill amounts to 216 million ariary, or nearly 50,000 euros for the purchase, in particular, of laptops, flat screens or even cameras. The Minister of the Interior, Tianarivelo Razafimahefa, who is also the president of the Operational Command Center, defended himself in the national press, indicating that it was a material donation from the United Nations Program for the development. "  It is this partner who bought the equipment himself wherever he sees fit  ", he said in the newspaper L'Express de Madagascar.

Civil society maintains that there is a conflict of interest in the award of this public contract. "  The question could have been quite simply settled if the minister had declared a conflict of interest and had recused himself from the award of this contract," explains Ketakandriana Rafitoson, executive director of Transparency International in Madagascar. He just had to say to the UNDP: "I cannot go along with this deal since my wife works for this company." We contacted the UNDP to get their side of the story. He replied that he only dealt with the disbursement of the requested sum upon presentation of the invoice. Everything that is the choice of the supplier was operated by the ministry and therefore the Operational Command Center and not by the UNDP. So it is the reverse of what the minister said. That the government, which insists all the time that corruption is its hobbyhorse, take this opportunity to demonstrate its willingness to change things, by starting by opening an investigation and then by taking sanctions against those responsible for this case.  "This case is"  a concrete example of the lack of transparency in the management of funds allocated to Covid-19  "estimates twenty civil society organizations calling for the opening of an investigation.

Contacted, the Minister of the Interior did not respond to our requests.

For several weeks, civil society organizations in Madagascar have been asking for more transparency in the management of funds allocated to the response against Covid-19. In July, the Ministry of the Economy and Finance published a report on its website to report on the funding provided by international donors in the fight against the coronavirus.

A document that is not detailed enough for civil society organizations. They demand, among other things, the list of public contracts awarded as part of the fight against the pandemic and the application of the decree creating the Covid-19 fund adopted by the government council on July 1. This provides, in particular, the publication of a monthly activity and financial report of allocations dedicated to the response against the coronavirus, indicates civil society.

Newsletter Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

• Madagascar
• Coronavirus