The Kenya Private Sector Alliance has called on the Attorney General’s office to fast-track the development of regulations to fully implement the Bribery Act, 2016.
The Act, largely from the private sector, came into force in January 2017 to curb the high rate of corruption.
However, its implementation is being hampered by the lack of regulations, which, as a result, makes graft thrive.
Kepsa CEO Carole Kariuki said the Bribery Act has the solutions to most of the problems that graft brings to the country and needs to be implemented to save Kenya billions of shillings lost to corruption.
“It took long. It went to Parliament and was passed. But we’ve had a long process with the AG on regulations. And that’s where we are stuck.
“If there is anything that we can do at this forum is to out for those regulations to come out so that the Act can be implemented I full,” said Kariuki.
She spoke at the Speaker’s Round Conference 2019 at Travellers Beach Hotel.
National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi said though the private sector has to be lauded for coming up with the Bribery Act, they have long been accused of being mostly the giver of the bribes.
“Whereas corruption has always been associated with government officials, we are yet to see a single government officer charged with giving bribes.
“All the cases are about government officers receiving bribes. But from who?” posed Muturi.
He said the Bribery Act was intended to address this.
He asked the private sector to walk the talk and help in enforcing the law.
However, Kariuki, though acknowledged the private sector is guilty of being the bribe givers in most cases, said they are always pushed to the wall to give.
“All the times, it is not that they are willing to give. A lot of times it’s being cajoled. Unless you do this, this is not going to move. Or approvals just take forever and people are spending,” said Kariuki.
Kariuki said there have been cases where politicians even mobilize locals against projects so as to force the investors to ‘gift’ them with something for the projects to go on.
Corruption, she said, is a Kenyan problem and passing the buck will not help.
“I don’t know why Parliament has a problem in passing the threshold on corruption fine to Sh10 million,” the Kepsa CEO noted.
