Cotu lauds President Uhuru Kenyatta's for fight against graft, calls for probe into Sh130B National Social Security Fund joint property development venture in Mavoko and Nairobi

Kenya: COTU has lauded President Uhuru Kenyatta for asking public officials mentioned in graft claims to step aside pending investigations.

The movement has also called Sh 130 billion National Social Security Fund joint property development venture in Mavoko and Nairobi as open fraud and called for investigations.

Here is the full statement

The Central Organisation of Trade Unions, COTU (K) lauds His Excellency the President Uhuru Kenyatta for his unprecedented bold and assertive move on the corrupt individuals in his government and as a country we should all rally behind and support the President so that he delivers his election pledges to us irrespective of one’s status as demonstrated through his action yesterday at the same time we urge the President to remain firm and vigil against the mentioned individuals hell-bent on using their usual corrupt way of ensuring their names are expunged from the list.

And as relevant investigative agencies continue to execute the President’s directive, we wish to further reiterate that the National Social Security Fund

(NSSF)’s joint venture projects’ Private Public  Partnership for  its Mavoko Municipality and Nairobi Kenyatta Avenue property is open fraud that should be investigated and those responsible to answer (see attached copy from Public Procurement Oversight Authority PPOA).

Whereas Section 92 of the Public Procurement and Disposal Act (PPDA)    2005 requires that complex procurements  like Private-Public Partnership joint ventures, Built Operate Own  Transfer among others are specifically approved by the PPOA prior to commencement, it is evident that tenders for Mavoko Municipality and Kenyatta Avenue property did  not follow  this process but instead the Fund tried to validate  the irregularity by asking PPOA to advise on the validity and evaluation whereupon PPOA advised that the PPDA 2005 Section 92 and PPDA 2006 Section 64 cannot be applied retrogressively.

Therefore, the NSSF management having been advised by the PPOA that the tenders were invalid due to passage of time and that the Law cannot be applied after the act, it was an act of impunity to purport to use the list of vendors who responded to the lapsed/terminated tenders and other similar tenders in the past as a source list for the restricted tender since tenders lapsed in their entirety not in part and were supposed to be returned unopened.

Equally, a restricted list of vendors who have not been subjected to any evaluation and/or due diligence is null and void ab initio because there is no way of knowing whether the entities exist as legal persons or not. How will one know such entities have capacity to enter valid contracts as provided under PPDA 2005 Section 31? These are among the questions that COTU (K) is keen on being answered before the NSSF sinks a whooping Ksh. 130B into the projects, an amount that is in itself  equivalent to the total NSSF’s total portfolio and could as well be likened to auctioning the entire workers’ Fund.