Procurement- Where the rain beats us everyday

Anybody who has analysed this country Kenya closely will have concluded that corruption is one of our biggest problems and hinderance to development. It does not choose tribe, religion or which administration is governing, as long as there is corruption anywhere things must go down south and the results are costly especially to humanity. Crime goes up, murders due to disagreements in shoddy deals, citizens lack essential govt services and goods like medicine, economy tanks because of hardship of doing business resulting in job/income loses and the inevitable low purchasing power and poor quality of life. Majority lack because of a few greedy individuals and the situation soon becomes that of 10 millionaires and 10 million paupers. Recipe for disaster. However, what is this corruption?

Corruption as we knew it back then was that of toa kitu kidogo here and there. The police kind of corruption of toa mia mbili, bribe someone something small to get service in a govt office etc etc Before Kibaki during Moi’s tenure and before the Kenyan economy was not that large and was in very few peoples hands. Govt revenue was not much comparatively due to poor tax collection that was mainly manual. The populate was much poorer, vehicle ownership minimal, house ownership at very low rates etc. Big corruption was for big people and mostly consisted of outright theft of public funds and resources. Influential people would grab public land for own use. Political leaders would degazette public forests and dish out land to loyalists. The president would dish out money left right and centre for political posturing, money which was outright public taxes diverted at his whims (Ruto got used to this).

However, at some point, corruption metamorphosized into business which became even harder to track and fight. Here the line between business and corruption got thinner and blurred, but the transactions grew bigger, and corruption became mega and almost easier to perpetrate. Infact it came even closer home with the advent of devolution. Procurement corruption is rife at the counties. Also govt revenue grew mostly due to automation/computerization. For example we had things like itax, ifmis and simba systems in place which greatly reduced tax cheats, made recording and monitoring easier in tax administration. However, you now could be ‘legally’ corrupt as you were doing business with the govt. You were now reffered to as a tenderprenuer. How you got deals depended on who you know, how connected you are. But in all this there is a very important step called procurement.

Whenever govt or its entities want to buy goods or services, there is a procurement procedure to be followed. This entails identifying the qualifying vendors who will supply quality at minimal cost after a competitive bidding process. Other requirements are whether the vendor is legally registered, has relevant professional qualifications, permits and licences. Whether they are tax compliant, whether they have the financial muscle to supply etc etc. Anywhere you have heard where the public has been duped and public money stolen, it all starts with the procurement process being compromised. Instead of it being used to identify the correct suppliers, it is used to lock out qualifying candidates and rewarding corrupt unsuitable/unqualified ones who share the loot with the administration, and the project cost is inflated so that everyone in the deal gets something. Qualified low bidders are eliminated on technicalities to chose the high bidders so that the cake for looters is bigger all this at the expense of the tax payer.

Procurement by the way is a professional career complete with a professional body. But in Kenya, they seem to be laid back, quiet against misuse of their profession and supports archaic procurement procedures that encourage corrupt practices. If you have tendered for public projects and supplies in Kenya, you will notice that the tender documents are always pretty large. Those bound documents contain a myriad of useless information that is mostly unverifiable but mandatory nontheless. Information like audited accounts for the last three years. Anybody will tell you that they go to the nearest cyber, have some fake accounts typed and printed then make some auditors stamp and there you go, they can show financial capability. Requirements like bank statements, again fakedvin river road, professional qualifications and manpower, they put in sove unverifiable cv’s, machinery, fake log books etc etc The document ends up being voluminous but with very useless information. And it even has to be serialized by hand. A whole 1000 pages of it. Ofcourse no one reads it in the prequalification process as the important part in all that document is the quote or BQ if you like.

My argument is this, prequalification must be made simple, reliable, verifiable and computerized as much as possible. If you claim to be a large supplier, rather than ask you for fake audited accounts, why not just look at your tax records, how much tax did you remit last year on that massive turnover you are boasting about, how much paye did you remit when you claim to have all those professional expertise employees. This just one verifiable parameter. We do not need physical voluminous tender documents that contain useless information and only encourage corruption. The professional body should be able to advice govt of modern ways of handling procurement that are electronic, easy and most importantly open.

Sijasoma but I know flounting procurement rules ndio imeleta hii shida yote.

You are right. This is the elephant in the room which is ignored by all, lack of good will is what is stopping us fight corruption. Why give tender to someone to supply newspaper to a govt institution when you can simply contact KTN, nation media etc to have their vendors supply the newspaper directly. Some things do not need to go through the procurement process, they just need the county govt or end user to buy directly.

We also ought to crowdsource vigilance against corruption. The government should simply legislate to compel all the details of procurement deals to be visible to everyone through a publicly accessible website. First, it would be easy to tell when undeserving entities win tenders against better contestants. Second, corruption can be caught before it happens because there will always be someone who can identify wrong or misleading information. For instance, the regular citizen may not tell the cost of a printer but someone in the industry can easily tell when such cost is inflated several times. Similarly, it may not be easy to uncover nepotism in tender awards just by looking at documents but there is always someone who knows where a relation exists. Corruption in this country is so pervasive we would need a huge workforce of angels to uproot it. It is not realistic to entrust the fight against corruption to the judiciary, which also wobbles from the same vice.

You are very right. There should be an online portal that is easy to access and gives relevant information on the awarding of a specific contract such as total bidders, the winning bidder, amounts bid, owners on cr12, tax compliance status, competencies etc. Only relevant and verifiable information from third parties. If a tender requires that i should have handled a similar job before, and the job is worth a billion kshs, the simple thing to do is check my past years returns at kra to verify whether i have declared a turnover of a billion or even close before. I cannot claim to have made supplies of billions as experience yet at kra my records indicate turnover of kshs 20 million only in the last five years. Thats a red flag, either im a tax cheat or im cheating on experience.
Any person doing business with a public institution should be ready for scrutiny of their tax status abd onwrship status. Hell, even a lifestyle audit. Audited financial statements are useless when not compared with actual declarations at kra.

Hii yote ni useless if politicians are still doing business with the govt while in govt, including the president himself who unironically promised to table a bill to legislate against said practice

Thats why we must speak about it, interrogate these things because there must be best practices that we can adopt, practices that meet international standards. They have to be there.
This culture of doing things for the sake of it is what we must shun and shed. For example, we must learn to get and use the information that helps us and discard useless documents that dont help the process. In the tender documents we have some pages called instruction to bidders and another called general conditions of contracts. Very bulky pages mostly over 300 pages. These are what you buy/download as tender documents. So they come from the employer for potential tenderers to read and understand. But when you return the tender, the same pages have to be part of it making it unnecessarily bulky. Who needs that information of which you add no input and in any case originated from the employer. Unamrudishia ya nini? Na mko wengi mnarudisha hiyo makaratasi yote yanini? We keep on cutting trees to print useless pages in this information age. Has the procurement professional body never seen this unnecessary wastage of time and money to advice againt it? We must as bonobos learn the value of necessary information and its presentation.

Dushisky siku hizi umekuwa philosophical what us not happening? Hii handle ya @Dunya ulifungua specifically ya matusi, lakini sasa naona ni kama umeokoka or something. Being all philosiphical abd shiet. Being all saved in the Lord Jesus and stuff.

shida ni they made those bulky documents by design, corruption has been normalized in Kenya. during nys1 biros were being sold for 5kbob, bar soap 15k or something, no professional body question it, government has it’s upper limit price for all procurement items but no one raised a voice, actually everyone cheered it,. Kabura openly said she packed millions in bags and walked with it and yet CBK has an aml department, they never brought her for questioning. Kirinyaga residents rewarded waiguru with governorship for her successful looting. The rot starts from the top, we keep saying there’s no alternative person to govern yet they’re always there, it’s just we’re comfortable with out tribemates being on top regardless of their issues, bora mtu wetu.
kuna clip fulani that was trending yesterday about 2013 election debate, a question was asked to the panelists, " how many of you have kids in public schools or have attended one?". Only kiyapi and dida spoke up, our god chosen demigods ignored that question.

Wee tulia tukusomeshe kule mambo inaenda mrama

Aisee kama ulinyimwa tender tuliza kende … go back to the drawing board and figure shit out, sooner or later u will get it right. In the meantime wacha wenzako wanukishe kitunguu …bloody nugu.

Yours is a bonoboistic view on things. Im a beneficially of the flawed system as well as a loser of the same. But losing we lose much more collectively as Kenyans more than the few that benefit. You see bonobo, if you win a tender to supply medicine, and because of corruption much less medicine is supplied at much more cost, it means someone deserving wont get that medicine when they need it and they might die. Who tell you those who suffer wont be your relatives, or friends, or even you? How many people have you seen die in this pandemic who had millions but because of a poorly equiped local hospital or dispensary that could not adequately help them in time of emergency. Remember that western mp. Another example, you might get a car accident. Do you think your very big car will always crash outside nairobi hospital. Think bonobo, think

We have very few if any " shared public spaces" with the ruling class unlike the case in europe.

Nice. I would go further and say tendering should be eradicated

Hehe you are enlightened sir

When done correctly it gives everyone a chance to participate and the tenderer to get the most reasonable quote without compromising on quality. Problem is the prescribed tendering process in Kenya is usually flouted for corruption purposes. Again the prescribed process may not be up to date with technological advancements and the professional body not keen on naming and punishing errant procurement officers.

The problem with Kenya is that we are very many and we are all qualified , so any Tender you will get 25 to 40 participants , out of which 10 , will have all the right documents , how do you zero in to one, that is the elephant in the room . so me as a tenderer i will lobby for my Bid . so nikiitishwa kitu unataka nifanye nini?.
Do you know what flimsy reasons you will be told ukiangushwa . at you never signed some sections, you never initialed the document , ama huku paginate document . one time i took a bid ya chakula pale AP embakasi imajine una dump documents hapo reception , no registaration , no sections zote was one big heap . how do you even dispute the results , wakisema yako haikua utadoo nini. tafakari hayo.

Thats why we are criticisizing the process. Its flawed. Its at the nerve centre of crruption. Like that dropping of documents at the reception, as you said, they will just throw it in the trash and say you did not submit. So part of the solution is to make it mandatory that bids are submitted online in an open forum where everyone can see and an acknoledgement given. Als submittion shoukd have only very few necessary documents that are verifiable