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{
"id": 418324,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/418324/?format=api",
"text_counter": 229,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Billow",
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"speaker": {
"id": 260,
"legal_name": "Billow Adan Kerrow",
"slug": "billow-kerrow"
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, it was reported widely last month that because of starvation, one family survived on dogs for a whole week in a place called Turkana. It was covered widely and the Government did not dispute that. That is the reference that I made. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we need huge investments in this sector, particularly in the Kenya Pipeline Company and the energy sector as a whole. So, we need a complete paradigm shift in terms of the way we look at this sector and invest. We cannot talk of the state corporations running these things and yet, there are investors who are interested. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, let me come to the issue of the refinery. If there is any fraud that the successive governments of Kenya have perfected and made Kenyans suffer, it is on the Kenya Petroleum Refinery. This piece of antiquate – something that was built in 1960 – is the most inefficient facility that we can talk of on this continent today. I want to tell you that because I am a player in this industry. When you take products there today, even as it remains closed, the oil marketing companies have lost a combined amount of money of nearly US$100 million, that the refinery owners are unable to refund, because of the losses it has incurred over the last 20 to 30 years. For the last five years alone, for every litre of fuel that you take from the pump, we are actually paying up to Kshs14 more because of the inefficiency of this facility. But because we believe in some idea that this is a strategic asset, we retained that thing. The Government has been dilly dallying in shutting down this thing. For the last month I have been hearing news, and it is a pity that the Committee did not raise this, that we have to pay some US$2 million or US$3 million. We sold 50 per cent of that company for a pittance – US$ 5 million. They were to invest, according to the agreement, US$400 million into that company, but did not spend a penny. Instead, for the many years that they have been running, their losses were covered 100 per cent, in a much skewed system of costing of the product. The Government of Kenya ensured that they were covered for the entire cost, plus the merging of profit, something that does not happen anywhere in the world. This is a commercial enterprise; they came here for business. So, you make your people suffer at the expense of giving profit to another party – a private sector that purports to have invested. They did not put a single penny and walked away with billions of shillings in profit. That philosophy and mindset is still there in the Government. There are many like, for example, the concession on the Kenya Railway. This same Committee needs to look at the concession on the Kenya Railway. We signed off that concession years ago for Rift Valley Railways to pump in billions, but what has been done? We are still running the same antiquated facilities that you see. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I am at least glad that the Kenya Petroleum Refineries has been shut down, but the Government has an obligation to pay the oil companies the losses that have been accumulated. To date, there are people who have paper stocks in that refinery that you cannot actually give to the oil marketing companies."
}