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{
    "id": 45507,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/45507/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 294,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Kiunjuri",
    "speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Public Works",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 175,
        "legal_name": "Festus Mwangi Kiunjuri",
        "slug": "mwangi-kiunjuri"
    },
    "content": "On the conduct of the contractors, we have come up with penalties but they must be very heavy. I agree with my colleagues, because at the end of the day, these contractors are arrogant. They are not regulated on how many contracts a contractor should have at one particular time. That is why we get a lot of incompetence in their work. You can imagine a contractor with more than eight contracts worth billions of Kenya shillings and has no capacity to run all of them. That is the worst thing that we are doing. This is especially on African contractors. When I say “African contractors”, I mean the Indians and all those other Kenyan contractors. At the end of the day, these people want to take more than they can swallow. You will find them having a contract with the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, another contract with the Ministry of Energy, four of them with the Ministry of Roads and six of them with the Ministry of Public Works. They want to get everything like that stupid child who would choke himself with a lot of food in the mouth because he cannot consume all of it. You will get those contractors running all over, I do not want to mention names, but I have an example of one of them with eight contracts today; six contracts from the Ministry of Roads and two from the Ministry of Water and Irrigation. The projects are spread all over the country and the guy has not done anything. They are either quarterly or halfway done and yet nothing is happening. They are very arrogant that they can afford to tell the Minister to go to hell, because at the end of the day, they will go to court and bribe the officials and the Minister will have no way to gag them. They can go and do whatever they want. I believe that when we go to the Committee of the whole House, we shall come up with regulations, so that we can regulate these contractors and ensure that none of them should have contracts worth a particular sum of money. If it is Kshs1 billion, we should seal it at that level, so that if a contractor has contracts worth Kshs1 billion, he should not go and tender for others. Let us regulate them according to their classes. If you are in Class A, with a ceiling of Kshs1 billion, let us regulate you accordingly. If you are in Class E, where you not supposed to do work worth not more than Kshs20 million, let us make sure that you do not have two contracts of more than Kshs20 million, because at the end of the day, you will not perform. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is true that we have competition now between foreign contractors and our local contractors. But once again, it is not the local contractors to be blamed as such, although, I have said that they are to blame because they want to take too much than they can swallow. It is also the responsibility of the Government to check the contractors because when it comes to payment, you will get a situation where a contractor has done up to 50 percent, but he has been paid only 20 percent. Sometimes I wonder why we give out contracts when we do not have money to pay the contractors. At the end of the day, this contractor cannot be paid and hence, the prices of goods will go up due to inflation. At the end of the day, you will get a contract that was supposed to cost Kshs100 million, going up by Kshs200 million, and we have to pay. Why do we want to pretend that we can give this contract when we cannot get the money? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would also like to ask the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry of Finance to make sure that when it prepares the Budget, it allocates money that we can be able to give out. They should pay those contractors otherwise it will be business as usual. They are all there claiming a lot of money. I am in the Ministry of Public Works, and I have been in the Ministry of Water and Irrigation and the Ministry of Energy. I can assure you that those contractors really reap from where they did not sow. If the Government, at the end of the day, has given out a contract and they are not ready to pay in good time, then they must be ready to pay for all the penalties. That is why I said it is very lucrative to be a contractor in this country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, on the issue of due diligence, it is true that we have so many briefcase contractors even today. People will go there register, a company and tomorrow, they want a job. Then they will trade with the same contract they have won. They will pretend that they can do a tarmac road, which they cannot do, and go and trade. It is important that due diligence is conducted before we give out these contracts. There is the question of titles; already we have the title of the Minister and that of the Permanent Secretary. Under the new constitutional dispensation, those titles will cease to be in use, immediately the next Parliament is elected. Therefore, it is important that this Bill be very clear in the Schedule that the Cabinet Minister for the time being will be replaced by the Cabinet Secretary. At the same time, the Permanent Secretary will be replaced by the Principal Secretary when the next Government will be in place. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, cowboy contractors will still continue to operate because the cartels are still there. This is the Chapter I would like to ask Members of Parliament, to really put emphasis on this part of the Bill, so that, that issue of penalties is addressed. Lastly, I want to talk about the question of foreign contractors. This is the only country where foreign contractors will come in and walk out with briefcases of money and go and invest it elsewhere. It is the only country whereby we have no clear trade rules. We must have a local component. Every contractor who comes here is compelled to get a local component; even if it is at 20 percent. In other developed economies, we have it at 30 percent whereby no contractor will be allowed to work here without a local component handling of 30 percent. That is only what we shall be left with here in this country. I appreciate the Chinese who are already having a lot of contracts here. However, let us be proud of our country. Let us make sure that we also benefit from those contracts. They should not come here and give us sub-contracts. Our African contractors have become sub-contractors because these people are winning all the contracts. Our local contractors get peanuts out of all these contracts. I believe that Members of Parliament will agree with us that we really must push on local component for every contractor, but in the near future, for every investor in this country, because that is the way to go. With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}