Governor Kibwana opens up tenders for public scrutiny

Makueni Governor Kivutha Kibwana (pictured) yesterday showcased his county’s open contracting system, which has been in operation since December last year, and invited the national government to adopt it.

The portal contains information on 389 contracts worth Sh1.7 billion.

The governor explained that through the system, all citizens can see what has been procured, support the process or raise alarm over identified irregularities.

“This is more than what national government is doing now through e-procurement and Integrated Financial Management Information Systems (Ifmis). In these two, you can’t see all the activities but in ours, you see everything including who won which tender and how much was paid,” Prof Kibwana said.

Kibwana, a constitutional lawyer, has for years fought for transparency and accountability in governance.

Publish information

Earlier this week, President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered the Ministry of Health to publish information on Kemsa tenders for the public to evaluate the amounts involved and who finally gets the tender.

Yesterday, Kibwana said his administration has saved millions of taxpayers money owing to the open system.

Once information is uploaded on the website, it is permanent and can’t be erased. Officers who interact with it can’t manipulate it and their activities are monitored by their seniors.

“Let us seize this moment and transform our procurement. I am writing to the President and my fellow governors to ask them to adopt this system. If we want to walk the talk, this is the real deal,” Kibwana said.

He said the system in Makueni also helps identify owners of companies and saves the county government the pain of paying to non-existent entities.

“We have done this at our level but we are liaising with the registrar of companies so that in future, before we give you a contract, we should be able to verify the real directors of the company so that we know the beneficiaries,” Kibwana said.

He said Makueni is also in the process of getting all of Makueni County Covid-19 related procurement marked with a unique identifier to enable the devolved unit to track all procurement for accountability and effectiveness.

“Open contracting contributes to ensuring that all businesses have the opportunity to supply goods and services and not only a select few. We need not only encourage our young people to open businesses but also take every measure to stimulate the business environment with opportunities for them,” he said.

Kibwana said despite the establishment and enforcement of public procurement reforms, there is still loss of public funds and costly inefficiencies.

“There is corruption and vast malpractices which lead to poor public service delivery and diminishing development outcomes,” he said.

In the recent past, the governor said, Kenyans have witnessed malpractices such as illegal ‘urgent purchases’, biased evaluations, unethical single sourced procurement, non-standardised bidding documents and specifications and selection of suppliers on the basis of bribery.

He explained that Article 227 of the Constitution envisages a public procurement conducted in a system that is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective.

[Protus Onyango is a 2019/2020 Bertha Fellow]