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{
    "id": 1224744,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1224744/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 128,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Suba South, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Caroli Omondi",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "that their power will be consumed. If you mismatch your demand with supply, then you will be paying for power that you are not consuming. Those are the problems. Let me go to the solutions. It is established that there is conflict of interest and corruption in the way the PPAs have been procured over the years. We have a very classical case in this country, the duty-free case. A gentleman called Nasir Ibrahim Ali came and set up a duty-free company and then he was kicked out. He went to International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which is a World Bank Entity. He pleaded that he bribed a former president and gave him a briefcase full of maize. The maize was $3 million. Now, ICSID said that because his contract was tainted with corruption, they could not enforce it, but they acknowledged that it was unfairly terminated. That is the correct position in law. It is time, therefore, that this inquiry looked into the PPAs to find out where there is corruption or conflict of interest, so that we vitiate such PPAs. Kenya cannot be burdened to pay all those expensive PPAs when we know clearly, and it is demonstrable, that there was corruption and conflict of interest. We should also retire the fuel fired PPAs like the one in Koru, which is the most expensive in the Republic of Kenya. We should retire it because to continue supplying power from there at very expensive tariffs is simply to burden industries and the local consumers. Twenty years ago, we tried to separate transmission from distribution. That is how Kenya Electricity Transmission Company Limited (KETRACO) was conceived. It was not just supposed to build power lines; KETRACO was supposed to be the transmitter of electricity as well as to be in charge of the National Dispatch Centre. If you separate transmission from distribution and generation, you give customers the opportunity to select their suppliers. The cheapest power is dispatched first and the most expensive power is dispatched last. We should, therefore, enhance and deepen the reforms and make KETRACO what it was supposed to be: not for rural electrification, but for controlling the Central Dispatch System and then we dispatch power on Economic Merit Order. We also need to deal with legal issues in this sector. We have problems of overstaffing, overstocking, corruption, and all those kinds of things. We need to deal with them. Finally, it is now time to look for a strategic investor in Kenya Power the way we did with Kenya Airways when it was working and the way we did with Safaricom, which is still working. Twenty years ago, when I was a young lawyer, we wrote off Ksh4.5 billion, and brought Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij (KLM) as a strategic investor in Kenya Airways. In the following years, under the able leadership of the late Ndegwa and Mzee Okero, they made so much money that when Okero retired, Kenya Airways had Ksh4.5 billion cash in their accounts. This is because KLM was able to stabilise the operations of Kenya Airways. It is time we got a strategic investor to stabilise the operations of Kenya Power. You can see Safaricom is making a lot of money because we have Vodafone bringing the best experience and the best expertise. That is the way forward. With those few remarks, I whole heartedly support the Motion. Thank you very much."
}