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{
    "id": 522739,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/522739/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 147,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Odhiambo-Mabona",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 376,
        "legal_name": "Millie Grace Akoth Odhiambo Mabona",
        "slug": "millie-odhiambo-mabona"
    },
    "content": "area. He did not persuade me especially on the issue of benchmarking, and more so on prices. Those of us who are managing CDF know that we have average costs, for instance, in terms of development of classrooms, depending on topography and transportation costs. However, the cost of a classroom can never go beyond Kshs1 million yet we know that in county government tendering, constructing a classroom can cost up to Kshs14 million. That is why it is important to provide for benchmarking and standardising costs for different goods and services. Of course, I know that we must be doing that in respect of professions that have set those standards including law. However, for the general ones especially for supply of goods, I think it is important that we standardise them. Another issue of concern to me, and which I want to appreciate in this Bill, is that it provides for the issue of blacklisting agencies and persons that have not complied with the law in the past. I do not want to pre-empt debate because I know that the Committee on Agriculture, Livestock and Cooperatives is dealing with the report from Mumias Sugar Company (MSC). The kind of rot that we have seen and the kind of things that people have done in public institutions in the past is amazing. In Mumias Sugar Company you find that we had companies that were blacklisted yet they were still being contracted to do work for it. Mumias Sugar Company still goes ahead and gives them more money and tenders even after they are blacklisted and have failed to deliver. I am glad that this is now being made a criminal offence. I would also want us to be consistent in language so that we use the same language as the one used in the Constitution. I have just noticed that in Clause 23 we talk about regional balance yet the Constitution talks about regional and ethnic balance. I was one of the members in the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitution and this is one of those things that we discussed at length and Members were a bit hesitant at using the word “ethnicity”. We said that we will always marginalise small communities if we do not use it. I am half Luo and half Suba. I am happy because I am partly a majority and partly a minority. If we said we want to balance for instance appointments in Homa Bay County, we can actually give an appointment in Mbita to a Luo and we would have satisfied the regional balancing but we would not have done ethnic balancing. Because of that, we provided regional and ethnic balancing in the Constitution so that we do not have main tribes always taking every slot against the minority tribes. Therefore, I am also proposing amendments that bring in the issue of ethnic balancing."
}