Deputy President William Ruto yesterday demanded that directors of all firms doing business with the government be published in 30 days.
Aiming his gun at big names controlling public tenders, the DP wants the National Treasury to compile and make public the companies for public scrutiny.
“I want to ask the Treasury to forward the list of the parastatals and government departments that have failed to comply with the directive so that we can take on the boards and CEOs. It’s not a request the President was making. It is an order to be implemented,” Ruto said.
The DP was addressing the media, government officials, diplomats, development partners, and civil society groups on open governance at a Nairobi hotel yesterday. His remarks come after his close allies alleged that the war on corruption led by President Uhuru Kenyatta was targeting specific individuals.
“The National Treasury should forward the list of public entities yet to comply with Executive Order 2, of 2018, on the publication of companies doing business with the government,” Ruto said.
Uhuru on June 20, last year issued the directive (Executive Order 2 of 2018) to accounting officers whom he warned would be held responsible if they sanction new projects without express authority from the National Treasury. In addition, government agencies have failed to publish names of entities benefitting from tenders with those believed to be politically correct winning multibillion tenders.
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“When a government involves citizens and organised civil society in the audit of its governance practices, promises and programmes; the society is more stable, the country more organised and the people much happier because they know how their nation is being run in their best interests,” the DP said.
Ruto said the culture of the government officers denying the public vital information on its activities must stop.
He added that the National Treasury and other oversight bodies (Controller of Budget and Auditor General) should also include the details of those who have won the big tenders in their periodical reports for effective scrutiny.
“Government has been known as Sirikali -less information, more confidentiality, and many secrets. We all know that societies that have embraced democratic transformative governments, which is about less confidentiality and more information are growing,” he said.
Ruto said open governance will empower Kenyans to understand government operations and stop corruption at all levels of governments.
“I am happy and proud to be associated with the open government system, which we started three years ago. We do so because we are working hard to eradicate corruption, enhance transparency, elevate public trust in government and public institutions,” Ruto said.
The DP said publishing the information will help the government, civil society groups audit government activities.
Open Government is the convergence of effective public administration, civic engagement and technological innovation.
This information affords the opportunity to civil society groups and citizens to robustly track and monitor government spending by analyzing this data and create fact-based public conversations.
Ruto said such public information avails an opportunity for the public to identify loopholes for corruption and expose them.
“All government departments and agencies should regularly avail information to citizens on their policies and programmes in machine-readable formats; in open access portals especially through the Kenya Open Data Portal,” Ruto said.
He demanded the publishing of performance contracts of Ministries, departments and the public, know and monitor the execution of duties by public servants, in near real time.
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