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{
    "id": 517853,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/517853/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 191,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Sakaja",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13131,
        "legal_name": "Johnson Arthur Sakaja",
        "slug": "johnson-arthur-sakaja"
    },
    "content": "people living with disabilities. The procurement and tender committees have maintained cartels that have continued to do all the business. The reason as to why we sought to put it in law was to make sure that it is now mandatory. Once this Bill becomes law, it will be mandatory that the specified percentage of Government business opportunities goes to the youth, women and people living with disabilities. Just to remind hon. Members, this Bill was unanimously passed by this House during the last Session. It was subsequently passed on to the Senate. Unfortunately, the Bill took a very long time at the Senate because of some inhibitions that I will not get into. The Senators felt that they should amend a few provisions of this Bill. The Bill is now back to the National Assembly for concurrence with the Senate on the amendments they passed. Hon. Speaker, I will quickly take hon. Members through the Senators’ amendment, so that they can understand that the Senators only sought to tighten the definitions, instead of the repetition of ‘youth, women and people with disabilities’ contained in the Bill. We have now defined them as “disadvantaged groups”. The rest of the amendments removed references that existed before the promulgation of the new Constitution. The Senate replaced all references to ‘Minister’ with ‘Cabinet Secretary’. They have also prescribed public entities and listed them down, specifically because the real business that our young men and women need to access is at the county level. I thank the Senate for specifying that this applies to both the national level and the county level. Those provisions have been enhanced because it has been established that lack of the ability to monitor the tendering processes has been a hindrance. We have since included a monitoring mechanism to the Bill in the form of a requirement that every three months, each and every public procuring entity gives a report to the Public Procurement Oversight Authority (PPOA) on how they have given contracts and tenders. The most important point to note is that it is not the total number of contracts or 30 per cent of the number of contracts awarded to our disadvantaged groups that matters; it is 30 per cent of the total value of contracts. For example, after removing the Recurrent Expenditure from the national Budget of 2014/2015 Financial Year; Kshs1.8 trillion, 30 per cent would be Kshs330 billion. Every three months, the procuring entities have to show their progress towards achieving the total of Kshs330 billion worth of business award to our young people, women and people living with disabilities. Once the report has been made to PPOA, it has to present a report to Parliament through the Committee responsible for equalisation of opportunities, which is the Joint Committee on National Cohesion and Equal Opportunity, to which I happen to be the Chair. That way, we can find out which governors are not giving business to our young people, which Ministries are not giving business to women and which State corporations are not giving businesses to those groups of our society. We can then hold them to account. Hon. Speaker, I would like to urge Members that we can quickly concur with those amendments of the Senate that have come to us so that this Bill finally sees that light of the day. There are many cartels that are having a field day because of the delay that we have had in Parliament of not passing this Bill. If we do not concur with the Senate, the Bill will have to go to mediation which may take us a number of months moving forward. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}