President Uhuru Kenyatta has ordered the Health ministry to put all details of Covid tenders for Kemsa online within 30 days.
The wide variance in the cost of PPEs purchased by the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority implies that there was some wrongdoing, as does the inability of Kemsa to offload Sh2.5 billion of Covid supplies in its warehouses as counties purchased the items more cheaply elsewhere.
Two years ago, President Kenyatta instructed that all tender details should go online. This happened to some extent on the Treasury website but without enough information to create true accountability.
For instance, two companies that won big Kemsa tenders were only registered in February this year. But how could they win a tender within a month without any track record, without staff and without proper offices?
The online information about successful government tenders should not just include the price, the losing bidders, and the name of the winning company. It should also include the date that the winning company was set up, its office address and the name of the directors. Then we could decide if a briefcase company had won the tender.
Quote of the day: "You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it."
In 2017 President Kenyatta ordered that all government tender details should be put onlineHo Chi Minh
The Vietnamese leader died on September 2, 1969
