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{
    "id": 1007365,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1007365/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 339,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Homa Bay Town, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Peter Kaluma",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1565,
        "legal_name": "George Peter Opondo Kaluma",
        "slug": "george-peter-opondo-kaluma"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for the report coming on this Public Procurement and Disposal Act. I was among the Members to serve in the first Committee when it was first established in 2013 under the new Constitution. On procurement, we ought to be bold than we have been. It is under the realm of procurement that corruption is built in this country. The rate at which we are procuring for goods and services is too high. These monies that we budget and appropriate cannot leave the coffers into the pockets of people without passing through that system. I had a benchmarking trip with Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) and Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to Rome Italy not long ago. They did reveal that as against the black book we are talking about, no company can engage in public procurement whose value would be an equivalent of Kshs100 million unless you are approved by Government agencies and you are in the white book. Italy has a procedure that we must incorporate in our procurement system. The procedure incorporates Anti-Corruption Commission such that the authorities in charge of corruption are part and parcel of the procurement process, and do not just come in at the end when monies are being validly paid because some papers have been made to look well. It is an area that the Committee has looked into and it is something that we must progress into going forward. Secondly, we must move from the idea of paper-based procurement to service delivery on the ground. We have overemphasised the Public Procurement and Disposal Act and the laws around procurement to the extent that even for the miniature works like NG-CDF works in the constituencies, the local communities cannot do them. They cannot be contracted. There are people in offices who do not know how to do the technical work, but are good at making papers. Strangers are procured yet it is the local people who are doing the work, only for money to go elsewhere. We must move to a system of questioning whether there has been delivery in substance as against a mere situation of paper work. If we approach it that way, we will succeed. The other limb around procurement that we need to look at is how we can ensure that the costing is down. I want to address the EACC. I was happy a while ago because there was a move against procurement officers in Government. In my own constituency, when I was elected, I sat with the national Government procurement officers and asked them the cost of doing a classroom. They told me it is Ksh1.8 million. I chased them from that meeting and I ended up doing two classrooms to completion at Ksh1.3 million, and I continue to date. We must have penalties that will make people fear the idea that through procurement or being merely neat on paper you can enter into public coffers and eat money. If we do that, and we look at the procurement regime in The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}