AG reveals he never advised on rail project tendering

By PAUL WAFULA 

NAIROBI, KENYA: Attorney General Githu Muigai shocked members of the parliamentary Public Investment Committee (PIC) when he said he never offered an opinion on the tendering process to the Public Procurement Oversight Authority (PPOA) when procuring the railway tender.

The government’s legal adviser however maintained that he has neither approved the project nor rejected it given that his office is yet to be furnished with relevant documents to make a judgement.

Prof Muigai said a letter he wrote to the procurement oversight body, insisting that any procurement process adopted must be backed by Kenyan laws, was only a general cautionary measure against blanket violations of law in the guise that the project was a government-to-government initiative. 

The AG, who appeared not to want to be drawn into answering the question on whether the project is legal or not, however said he still stand by what he wrote in the letter to the procurement watchdog.

He said he demanded from PPOA documents relating to the procurement of the SGR tender, but the agency never provided him with any.

“It has been argued that I opined that the procurement procedure that was being employed was wrong. That cannot be far from the truth, as I could not give such an opinion without looking at the requisite documents, which I told PPOA to forward to me. They did not do it and I considered that matter to have come to rest at that point,” said Muigai.  

The AG said his advice was largely influenced by the manner in which the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) procurement, another government-to-government arrangement, was done resulting to questioning of the process.

“After the BVR debacle, we became acutely sensitive to G and G (Government to Government) arrangements, hence my general advise that caution must be exercised when dealing with this form of an arrangement,” he said.

The Government’s legal adviser said in many cases where financing of projects is undertaken by donors, competitive procurement process is ignored at the dictation of the development partner.

“The ideal situation is always that a competitive procurement is employed, unfortunately that is not possible as the provider of finances may require that the tendering process be limited,” he said.

The AG said requirements by the Chinese government, where contracts are signed before financing for the projects is sourced, complicated the procurement process.