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{
    "id": 1152554,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1152554/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 97,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Omogeni",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13219,
        "legal_name": "Erick Okong'o Mogeni",
        "slug": "erick-okongo-mogeni"
    },
    "content": "Pending Bills in our counties have become a huge problem. If the situation does not change, many people will not find it attractive to do business with counties. Why should you do business with a county government and wait for your payment for six years? Why should you risk putting your property as security to do business with a government that will never pay? This is really being unfair to our young entrepreneurs and I hope some solution can be found to this problem. I am happy with the proposed amendments to Section 41, which is Clause 7 of the Bill that wishes to address frivolous and vexatious appeals to ARB. There are Kenyans who will never accept to lose fairly. If they apply to be awarded some tender and they do not get it, it becomes a corruption allegation. They will always say somebody has influenced the process and unfairly denied them an opportunity, yet at times, they did not even pass the preliminary assessment or even the financials alone. It is good to protect people who genuinely want to do business from these vexatious litigants. There are people who just believe in litigations. Even when they lose fairly, they will still find a way. This is a very progressive proposal. Where it is on merit and ARB has considered the appeal and comes to a conclusion that the appeal is frivolous and vexatious, then they can make a decision and strike out that appeal. As Sen. Sakaja has put it this afternoon, there are a number of projects that have stalled because of the many appeals that have been filed to ARB. This is progressive and I fully support. Then there is Clause 14 that proposes to amend section 54, to introduce the carrying out of market survey. Mr. Speaker, Sir, I hear that in this country even a pen that costs Kshs50 in the market can be sold to government at Kshs500. I like this idea that we should task the head of procurement entity to carry out market survey and that market survey should be filed with the accounting officer so that if you are buying a pen at Kshs500, which costs Kshs50 in the market you should have some explanation why you have that wide deviation of Kshs50 up to Kshs500. This is good, we want to protect public money. We do not want to create overnight millionaires. Let us have prices that are fair, that reflect the market price and not prices that clearly point to a collusion between the accounting officer and service provider for personal enrichment. I can see my time is up, but I am also happy with what is proposed in Clause 19 of the Bill that seeks to amend Section 22 to make the sums that are quoted in the tender documents to be absolute so that this game of people putting a figure in the tender documents, but there is a window to change the figure maybe in collusion with the procuring entity, is done away with so that there is fair play. In total, I support the Bill that is on the Floor. It is progressive but it needs to be improved. There are some things that are not clear about, like I do not understand why we should have more than one procurement profession. The accountants have one profession that deals with accountants. Lawyers have one profession that deals with lawyers. I believe it is the same with doctors. Therefore, I do not understand what is in Clause 2 that seeks to amend the principal Act by saying that other than the procurement professional body we 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."
}