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"content": "rather sit and oversight the funds that I carry from this House to the Governor on the ground. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, there is the important issue of safeguards from abuse. I am glad that this has been included in this amendment Act. But there is something more. It is quite important that we should put a clause for punishment. This is because Kenyans are very good at creating proxies. If they created proxies in the name of Mobitelea, including proxies for funds like Anglo Leasing, there will be nothing difficult in them creating proxies through which the money will be siphoned. We must put punishment so that bona fide companies belonging to our youth are the ones that access credit. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the process of formation of a company is also difficult. We might at our level think that it is very easy, but when you go to a village in Navakholo in Kakamega, forming a company is a big challenge. So, the youth should find it easy to register a company. In the era of the YEDF, we have village consultants who were earning from writing proposals. So, if the youth want to start a project of doing bricks and they are supposed to borrow, probably, Kshs100,000. There is a consultant; sometimes, a retired primary school teacher who knows how to write project proposals. He will say: “Put Kshs10,000 on the table before I give you the proposal.” The youth will just give up because they cannot get the Kshs10,000. These are the practical issues on the ground. Once again, we do not want to use this fund to expand the gap of poverty between children whose parents are in the middle class and the children of the hollopolloi. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, my final point on this is for me to request my colleagues that during this amendment, probably, it is an opportunity for us to think further, harder and deeper. This is because I notice that sometimes there is a lot of wastage. Let me give an example. If you want to spend Kshs100,000 for a particular service, the process of procurement of advertisement, tender committee sitting to peruse the applications, award and so on, attracts sitting allowances, cost of advertisement and so on. When you count what these people are being paid, they will have spent that Kshs100,000 that they wanted to make sure that they sell out or something very close to it. Maybe a time has come where we should go the international way. A tender committee should be allowed a certain minimum amount of money which they can spend without necessarily going through the whole process of procurement. It could be Kshs500,000 or something like that, so that this wastage through sitting allowances, advertisements and so on can be controlled. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in fact, do not be surprised that some of the newspapers are very careful in critiquing devolved governments, because they fear that if they are very aggressive on them, they will be denied advertisements. So, you should allow tender committees to say: “For projects of Kshs200,000 or Kshs500,000, we can spend the money through internal controls and give receipts and so on.” There is an additional benefit. If you buy a biro pen straight from the shop, it will cost, probably, Kshs50. But if you tender and people hear that the same biro pen is being sold to the Government, where Sen. (Prof.) Kindiki is the Senate Majority Leader, they will say that each biro pen is Kshs150. You will then find that, that money has been paid, because of this lengthy process which we can control by simply people knowing that in a supermarket a biro pen The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}