House teams come under scrutiny as they assert their oversight function

The National Security and Administration Committee is the latest parliamentary team to give the Executive the go-ahead on a contract worth billions.

In a new trend where MPs scrutinise government projects before implementation, the committee gave the Sh14.9 billion Safaricom security surveillance system contract a clean bill of health.

The current MPs are different from their predecessors in that they tend to question the integrity of big government jobs before they start, often raising a furious storm if they have not been appraised.

In such cases, the committees’ first instruction is to the Executive to suspend a deal until it is investigated.

This started early this year with the contract given to China Road and Bridge Corporation for the construction of a new railway.

Standard gauge railway

Currently, Transport and Public Investments committees are scrutinising the award of the contract to review the design and oversee the construction of the standard gauge railway to a Chinese consortium and two Kenyan firms.

Parliament’s increased involvement in the sort of scrutiny usually conducted by the Public Procurement Oversight Authority has raised questions over whether its oversight mandate extends to “approving” contracts.

House leaders Aden Duale and Jakoyo Midiwo caused a stir early this year when they claimed that committees were involved in “rent-seeking” as they went about their duties.

Mr Midiwo, the Deputy Minority Leader, said wars between committees over control of investigation and oversight over the Executive had more to do with seeking benefits than the public good.

“All these clashes are not because of any lacuna in the Constitution or the Standing Orders. They are because of the value of that investigation, which members don’t know. That value is what we must speak about,” said Mr Midiwo.

The clash was between the Transport and the Public Investments committees. Both claimed the mandate to scrutinise the standard gauge railway contract.

The dispute arose after Speaker Justin Muturi ruled, last December, that the PIC and the Public Accounts Committee cannot form joint teams with departmental committees because they had separate mandates.

The differences persist, and now, the two teams are carrying out parallel inquiries into the other standard gauge railway-related contract.

Mr Midiwo’s allusion to corruption was never followed through and an informal meeting called to discuss that and other allegations did not take place because only a handful of MPs showed up.

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has said it is investigating members of the Transport Committee on allegations that they were bribed by businessmen and wheeler-dealers as they investigated the railway contract.

Senior Counsel Nzamba Kitonga says scrutiny of contracts by the committees is okay if they “draw a red line” and are not involved in approving them but limit their role to questioning the integrity of the Executive’s actions.

Oversight role

“My take is that they are satisfying themselves in view of complaints as to whether, because they have an oversight role, it meets the integrity requirements of the procurement legislation and in the case of the police, the competitive process of recruiting that is in the Constitution,” he says.

Mr Kitonga, who chaired the Committee of Experts that drafted the Constitution, said “approval” for him meant certifying whether the individuals recruited for the police, for example, are fit for the job, which is not what the MPs are doing.

“You remember, in the past, MPs used to handle the report of the Controller and Auditor-General, which is three years old and by that time, money has been stolen, people have enriched themselves and in some cases even left the country and there is nothing we can do.”

That was the case with the unfulfilled deal for a fertiliser factory in the 1970s that Kenya continues to pay for, in spite of Ken-Ren, the contractor, not having put up the plant. Kenya will have paid Sh5.1 billion by 2015. According to Mr Kitonga, Parliament’s inquiries should stop at assessing the integrity of projects.

“Making themselves the final authority to approve would not be proper.”

Director of Media and External Relations at State House Munyori Buku says the Executive has no problem with the investigations because they enhance transparency.