Passport saga: Analyst thinks Techno Brain is behind the mess at Immigration Department

I don’t know if people have already forgotten but in 2022, a civil case ensued in court as commenced by Techno Brain against the Government over contractual dispute.

Around December 2021 or thereabout, the Government lawfully terminated a contract with Techno Brain citing discovered irregularities that characterized the awarding of the contract. The contract was awarded in 2019 during the DPP era. It was a BoT arrangement whereby Techno Brain had to Build, Operate and then Transfer (BoT) the system to Malawi Government.

Techno Brain disputed the irregularities in obtaining the contract by arguing that the contract was a product of a competitive bidding process that followed procurement regulations. Techno Brain further pleaded that the contract was beneficial to both the Malawi citizens and the Malawi economy.

Reports indicate that the supplier of passport booklets from Vienna (Austria), pegged the average unit cost of each booklet at $9.13 (K7 221.83 by then) and from Singapore, the cost is around $1.73 (K1 368.43 by then). Techno Brain was then selling each booklet to the Government at $76 (K60,166.00 by then). How this disparity could be beneficial to the Malawian citizen (as a consumer of the product) and the economy of the country begs proper explanation.

Fast forward, quick supplementary facts are as follows:

1. Based on the BoT arrangement, Government compelled Techno Brain to hand over the system with the source code. This was done albeit with reluctance.
2. ⁠Techno Brain delivered 387,000 passport booklets in total. The last consignment of 237,000 booklets was delivered in January 2024. A week after delivering the last consignment, the system was hacked.
3. The hacking also took place two days after Techno Brain had worked on renewal of certain system licences.
4. In issue therefore is that either Techno Brain was negligent in failing to secure the system or Techno Brain is the main suspect in the hacking, in which case if the latter holds true, then Techno Brain may have worked with internal collaborators to hack the system.

Now, when others concoct that the system shut itself when the Government was trying to bypass the suppliers of the system, it becomes entirely laughable and indicative of lies that have been peddled by those who were benefiting from the alleged irregular contract either by themselves or their agents, the agents themselves being unsuspecting or otherwise.

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