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"id": 1145006,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Molo, JP",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Kuria Kimani",
"speaker": {
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"legal_name": "Francis Kuria Kimani",
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"content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me an opportunity to contribute to this discussion. At the outset, I want to say that these amendments are very crucial at this time in the country, as we are trying to make gains against corruption. Stealing in this country is planned at the procurement level. It starts when the budget for a particular ministry or Government agency is being done through procurement and through the awarding of tenders. Every time we are on the streets, the first thing people tell you when they realise that you are a Member of Parliament or Government official is: ‘Nisaidie kupata tender’ . When you ask the kind of tenders they would like, they say, any kind of tender. In this country, you cannot be supplier of everything and you cannot be someone who can give any service or supply any goods. This is what is happening in the Government. Anybody, irrespective of whether they have the capacity or not; irrespective of whether they are in that business or not, they are able to supply products and services and, therefore, become rich at the expense of many other qualified or competent people who would have been awarded those contracts. Most of the Members of Parliament can bear me witness that when the rollout of the provision of desks came from the national Government to our constituencies, it became difficult for us, through the NG-CDF, to buy desks from local suppliers because the cost which the national Government was buying those desks was almost double the price that we used to purchase those desks at the NG-CDF. The infrastructural funds that come to schools in my constituency can be able to build a class at a cost of Kshs.1million. That is the most amount of money we have used. However, when the same school receives money from national Government through the Ministry of Education, that same class is awarded Kshs1.6 million shillings; a difference of a whole Kshs600,000. This is just an example of the theft that happens through procurement processes, not to mention our county governments. To build an ECD class in my county costs around Kshs1.7 million. To build the same class in the same school with NG-CDF costs us about Kshs1million. Therefore, the changes in the pricing that are going to be cured through the amendments proposed by this Bill are good. We shall now be able to procure services through our CDF and through other agencies at a fair price through the provision that allow for market survey. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I thought about the judgment that was done by our courts this week and the many pronouncements of people who stole money. One was asked to pay Kshs1.2 billion or go for ten years’ imprisonment. I think this is a big win on the war against corruption. However, on analysing, if you steal Kshs.1.2 billion and you are told instead of paying that money back, go to jail for ten years. It means that for the time this person will be in jail, he will be earning about Kshs100 million a year. He will be earning about Kshs8.3 million a month and, therefore, Kshs277,000 a day. If that man called Tandaza of Usiku Sacco was given a chance to go to jail or get Kshs1.2 billion, he would choose to go to jail for even 30 years for such kind of money. Therefore, by enacting these laws from the beginning, where we are able to deter corruption from where it is being planned - at the budget and procurement levels – and also by allowing other professionals to join this field--- Procurement has also become a field for the few. If you look at the membership of the Kenya Institute of Supplies and Procurement, they are very few. You will find that our Government agencies do not even have many qualified people to do procurement. Therefore, those professionals that do these kinds of mistakes in these departments can only be transferred to other departments because we locked out many other professionals from joining the procurement processes. In any case, you find most of the procurement processes now are automated. So, the 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."
}