Keep public contracts open for accountability

I have been musing about government contracts and need for accountability on providing key details about them.

We need a clear report of the contract amounts, bidding process, criteria for choosing the winner and a detailed footnote on how much government functionaries have been given under the table.

That is true accountability and is the only way we can hold people to account. All government projects – be it roads, dams, railways, ports etc – should be placed in a central depository so that interested parties can peruse the documents and query if they find something that’s not adding up.

The depository should be open to the public. I believe in this way, we would not have many projects that are incomplete or abandoned. It will help avoid dubious contracts that end up being a drain on taxpayers.

I use the Nairobi-Nyeri-Nanyuki road often and I would like to understand a couple of things. The section between Kenol and Sagana is almost 100 per cent complete while the rest going up to Marwa looks like the contractor has been on a go slow for years.

Yet, the two sections are almost equal in length, and they were contracted out to respectable Chinese companies. The two sections don’t seem to have any difference in terms of civil engineering aspect, yet they look like they were built using two different engineering manuals or whatever they use in building roads.

The Kangemi to Kikuyu road looks like it was done in a hurry, with bushes overgrowing the edges of the road making the entire section look like a CBC project.

And what happened to the contract awarded to a French firm to dualise the Nakuru highway? I understand it’s now been contracted to a Chinese firm. Nothing against the Chinese – on average they build pretty good roads – but my problem is we weren’t told what happened with the initial contractor.  

My take is that such multi-billion-dollar contracts contain punitive exit clauses that make it financially painful for the party that breaches the contract.

I would like to know for instance the circumstances that led to abandonment of the Arror–Kimwarer dam project.

The project was abandoned even before it had started, yet the government is said to have parted with billions of shillings to compensate the contractor.

Shouldn’t there be an inquiry as to how we ended up in this situation? Shouldn’t the culprits be feathered, drawn and quartered somewhere along the streets of Nairobi? It would be quite a spectacle, seeing a couple of chaps arraigned in the streets like the common thieves they are.

My feeling is the government of the day cancels such projects so that the new powers that be can re-negotiate the tender and the amounts payable to rent seekers in the system, damn the financial consequences. But if there was information freely available, including the reasons for contract cancellation, then we wouldn’t be feeling short-changed at all.

Governments the world over are wasteful but ours is special. I once had a conversation with former CEO of Nakumatt and he had an interesting proposition, though he said it in jest. He reckoned that the government should source most of its products from the retailer since the prices are very friendly compared to those the government procures its products.

On average, government procures its products at 100 per cent of the retail prices elsewhere. I wonder how the prices are agreed upon because it seems as if they are fixed with a kickback in mind.

The writer is a communications consultant