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{
    "id": 1152540,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1152540/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 83,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sakaja",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13131,
        "legal_name": "Johnson Arthur Sakaja",
        "slug": "johnson-arthur-sakaja"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity to contribute to The Public Procurement and Asset Disposal (Amendment) Bill (National Assembly Bills No. 32 of 2021) that has come to us from the National Assembly. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act is one of the most important pieces of law that we have in our country, but is also one of the most abused. It is an extensive statute that many times, if you look at audit reports of our counties, the Auditor-General’s reports of the national Government, Ministries and State agencies, you find a lot of violation of both this Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act as well as the Public Finance Management Act. A lot of these violations are done deliberately by accounting officers in both national and county entities because of different interests. This is a law that for me was my first piece of legislation in the National Assembly where we introduced the provisions for 30 per cent preferential and reserved procurement for young people, women and PWDs. I will speak to that in detail, but that was indeed a long process. In fact, the initial version of the amendment was returned by the President and we had to negotiate. Finally, we came up with a law that we believed would essentially provide a lot of opportunities and hope for our young people, women and PWDs who for the longest time have been at the periphery of public procurement. They have not been able to engage with Government and have not benefited in terms of doing business with it. Mr. Speaker, Sir, quickly looking at some of the provisions and I will not highlight all of them, but only those which are of interest to me. The amendment of Section 9 is an important one. It talks about the functions of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority. We used to have Public Procurement Oversight Authority (PPOA), but the name was changed to Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA). The functions are extensive, but what is being added by the Mover, Sen. Poghisio, is that one of the functions of the authority then, becomes to develop promote and support the training and capacity development of persons involved in procurement and assets disposal. This is extremely important, especially for these groups that we are talking about. For the longest time, public procurement has been a preserve for a few connected tenderpreneurs who have mastered the system. They know how to fill in those documents, what is coming up and how to get the information. Information is power. They are the only ones who have access to this information. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}