Moses Kuria’s law to fasten pay of State suppliers...wakieka hii kwa mbimbi-i, inapita asubuhi

The best thing that can come out of the 12th Parliament is to approve the amendment to the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act sponsored by Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria.

The amendment seeks to ensure that the youth, women and people living with disabilities who are government suppliers are paid within 30 days of delivering. For the rest, the amendment puts a 90-day payment cap.

If the MPs pass this amendment – and most people of goodwill hope they do– I will forgive them all their past, present and future sins. Indeed, I will cut them some slack for their remaining tenure. As someone who had joined the MPs-are-greedy bandwagon, I will publicly disavow the sentiments of those who have called them all manner of names in the past, such as layabouts, ne’er do wells, leeches and such.

As for Mr. Kuria, the coming into effect of this amendment will reinvent him as the man we all knew before he ventured into politics: an economist with a good grasp of what turns the wheels of the economy and, indeed knows that when we talk of trickle-down economics, the government holds the ace in ensuring that the people’s welfare is well taken off.

This is one Bill that will put the country back on a recovery path. It will ensure that money gets back into circulation.

People will have more money to spend, pushing demand for goods and services, leading to more job creation – and the virtuous cycle continues. My only wish is that this Amendment is extended to the private sector as well since some are silent accomplices in this. The private sector has argued – and convincingly so – that when the government, being the largest consumer by far, delays payments, it affects everybody in the country.

Delaying payments to suppliers chokes the very life out of them. The government is pushing suppliers to the jaws of poverty and into the willing clutches of shylocks.

Whenever these small and medium enterprises get their miserable post-dated cheques, they immediately cash them at usurious rates with shylocks and other downtown unregulated financial institutions that are worse than armed gangsters. It is a disaster that this amendment will deal with in one fell swoop.

No less a figure than the Comptroller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo has pointed out that county governments owe suppliers Sh108 billion. Yes, that’s right, Sh108 billion. The Senate speaker recently put this figure at Sh400 billion. This is completely unacceptable.

Many suppliers to government – both county and central – source whatever they supply from other suppliers. They need to settle their dues to these suppliers. They have workers to pay. They have bills to pay.

They have taxes to pay, some of which, like VAT, are payable in advance as long as an invoice has been issued, whether payment has been received or not. Therefore, a delayed payment means that the domino effect devastates multiple people and leads to a general slowdown in the economy.

It might sound like some fishy economics but basic permutation shows that the delayed payment quoted by the Comptroller, at Sh180 million, might as well have a real impact of half a trillion shillings or more.

Add the hundreds of billions that some private sector players are guilty of delaying and we have in our hands a national crisis.

I know someone whose payment has been not been processed for the last five years by a leading, national institution. The effect on his business is now showing: banks are shying away from extending credit to him; suppliers too are keeping a wide berth. And this is someone who employs close to 200 people.

This is a business that is on the brink of closure, leading to a loss of employment for more than 200 souls. It has been established that for every Kenyan who is employed, he or she has at least five dependents. We are facing a crisis of unemployment and poverty of unprecedented proportions. For every business closed, the impact extends far beyond what we can see.

These payment delays have also spawned an unexpected problem: government suppliers are factoring in the expected delays by substantially increasing the price of whatever they are supplying, sometimes as much as double the market price. At a time when the government should be worrying about cutting expenditure to manage the ballooning public debt, paying suppliers on time is a low hanging fruit: it will lead to a massive drop in prices of goods and services supplied to it.

All government Local Supply Orders are supposed to be backed up by treasury allocation. You can’t supply something that has not been budgeted for and funds set aside for it. Tragically, this is not the case in reality.

There is no need for this law that Kuria, and we have not forgotten what he REALLY is, is sponsoring.

The existing Public Financial Management Act already requires that suppliers are paid within 30 days

Clout chasing!

The problem is not the tender but the fact that you want to grow rich via tenders. Get rich quick schemes. You deliver biro pens and leave a millionaire.

Ever stopped to think that on the other end of the line, the govt. is also looking for a dumbass who will provide “free” biro pens. And they have no intention of ever paying you!

So you are two conmen trying to con each other.

Jiulize if the prison departments wants meat, they can just purchase a few cows and graze them on the large tracts of available prison land. And they have plenty of free labour to herd the cows.

So why in the world are they asking you a civilian to sell beef to the prison? Na ujue wakishakula hakuna evidence ati ulileta nyama!

But what happens when the PFMA requirements are ignored,

You don’t make another law since it will be still ignored

Think, even if it ain’t your forte

What if you buy cows which will die?
The prison department is not a livestock production center
.
Unadhani huko ni kwako unaingianga na nyama ya 50bob halafu unakarangisha inuke ploti mzima?

Every prison on planet earth has a farm or aspires to have a farm to cut food costs.

Kenya is no exception they even have livestock managers and livestock departments in Kenyan prisons as this article below shows. Ni ukora tu ndio inafanya hao wardens waitishe nyama nje! A prison is self sustaining eco system, if well run.

Prisons' cashless strategy to revamp troubled enterprises

Realistically such tenders are simply designed for looting purposes.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/index.php/amp/smart-harvest/article/2000176882/kamiti-maximum-prison-farm-what-a-wonder&ved=2ahUKEwiEz_LC3sjsAhWsBWMBHW_vA8gQFjAAegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw2xOsU_rp9kzUI5y3ZtFQIN

[SIZE=7]Kamiti Maximum Prison farm, what a wonder![/SIZE]
By Sylvia Wakhisi

[SIZE=7][ATTACH=full]329968[/ATTACH][/SIZE]

Kamiti Maximum Prison is famous for holding one of Kenya’s most notorious and hardcore criminals. It is one of Kenya’s well-known correctional centre.

But did you know that within this facility is a gem that is positively transforming the lives of many inmates? Well, now you should know.
Driving through the dusty paths within the facility, one comes across expansive and evergreen plots of blossoming kales (sukuma wiki ), gleaming capsicum, beautiful and well-lined flower nurseries, eye-catching fruit tree nurseries and orchards of fruits such as mangoes, avocadoes, macadamia and bananas.

[SIZE=5]Further uphill on the other side of the farm, the grunt of pigs and cows mooing can be heard signifying its vast richness as far as agriculture is concerned. @Bingwa Scrotum [/SIZE]

Amid the scorching sun, the farm is a beehive of activity as groups of inmates go about various duties allocated to them.

The farm contrasts sharply with its surrounding dry environs.

https://cdn.standardmedia.co.ke/images/saturday/puvlwbuzqfgvun55fd2e337cb34.jpg[I]Grafted Mangoes at the Kamiti Maximum Prison Farm taken on 16th September 2015. [/I](PHOTO:WILBERFORCE OKWIRI/STANDARD)
According to Stephen Ithanzu, Superintendent of Prisons, who doubles up as the farm manager, Kamiti Medium prison farm was started in the early 1970s, to help in the rehabilitation of inmates.

“It was the government’s idea to start prison farms whose main objectives include training and equipping inmates with agricultural skills both in crop and livestock production, production of high quality fruit tree seedlings and generation of government revenue,” says Ithanzu.

“The prison farms are financed by a revolving fund set aside by an Act of Parliament,”he adds.

He says the total acreage of the correctional facility stands at 1,049 acres including the prison and staff quarters, but not all of it is under farming.

Currently, 250 acres are under crop and livestock production.

On our tour of the farm, we first stop-over at the fruit tree nurseries to catch a glimpse of the activities.

We meet Sergeant Stephen Nzou busy training a group of inmates on how to grow fruit trees right from the seed to the grown ones in the orchard.

Flower competition

“We take them through the entire process of seed collection, planting to grafting. The next step is to transfer those seedlings whose grafting has taken up well from those which have not. Once they are ready, we sell them to the public and county governments,” says Nzou.

Farther away from the fruit tree nurseries we meet Sergeant Rukia Wakesho, a floriculturist.

She is supervising loading of some flowers onto a lorry so that they are ferried to the venue of the Nairobi International Trade Fair Show which is expected to take place later this month.

“We will be participating in a flower competition in the show hence we have to prepare the best. We grow indoor and outdoor flowers as well as practise afforestation. The flowers vary in the duration of maturity depending on the variety. Some may take three months, six months and others one year. Once they are ready, we sell them to the public,” explains Wakesho.

Preparation of land for cultivation is done with the help of a tractor and all farm inputs are provided by the government.

The planting season varies for each crop. Vegetables are grown throughout the year while maize and beans are grown in both seasons that is the March to April season and the October to November season. The fruit trees are also grown throughout since they flower even in dry season.

https://cdn.standardmedia.co.ke/images/saturday/qrody9relwjmtad55fd2dee6a0ef.jpgFLOWER
“We buy certified seeds and fertiliser and the inmates come in to do the planting, weeding and harvesting. Once the harvesting is done, we weigh the produce to establish the harvest then issue it to the prisons ration store. In the last season, we harvested 400 bags of beans and are expecting to get about 600 bags of maize which has already been shelled,” says the farm manager.

Kamiti Medium Prison farm supplies some of its produce to various prisons which form its biggest customer.

Good profit

They include Kamiti Maximum Prison, Nairobi Industrial Area Remand Prison, Nairobi West Prison and Lang’ata Women’s Prison. They also sell to the public.

At the farm, every activity is taken seriously and that is why they have incorporated a number of strategies to ensure a bumper harvest. These include early land preparation. They have already tilled the land for planting in the next season. They also practise dry planting (planting before the rains), use animal manure from the livestock unit to grow vegetables and apply in the orchards and tree nurseries, and practise proper weeding.

According to Ithanzu, inmates are not involved in the selling of the produce.

“We have our sales clerks who sell the produce and issue official government receipts to customers,” he says.”

“I must attest to the fact that we do make millions of shillings from the sale of the produce. Every planting season, we are given targets by the government which we strive to achieve. If a target of Sh5 million has been set, we have to achieve that,” he says.

The challenges

Currently, the farm has 28 dairy cattle which are cross breeds of Friesian and Ayrshire, 36 goats, 20 sheep, 40 rabbits and 15 pigs.

The livestock are easily fed from nappier grass which is grown in the farm, natural grass and rhodes grass which is put in bales and kept for the animals.

Their journey into farming has, however, not been without challenges. Ithanzu cites inadequate rainfall, inadequate funding, poor storage facilities, and inadequate labour due to amnesty, diseases and pests as some of the challenges.

Ithanzu offers: “Kamiti does not receive a lot of rainfall hence in some seasons we end up getting poor harvest. When it comes to funding, considering that the farm is very big, we don’t get enough funding to put the whole land under cultivation. We tend to limit our farming to the amount of funds we receive from the government. We also have to grapple with the issue of pests and diseases whereby the vegetables are normally attacked by aphids especially during the dry season and leaf skeletonisers which feed on the leaves. In some plots where we grow vegetables, we experience inadequate water for irrigation. When it comes to inadequate labour, we can have many inmates but not all of them can work in the farms, depending on their offenses. For an inmate to work in the farm, they must have a sentence of three years or less.”

We irrigate

To address these challenges, Ithanzu says they are constructing four more earth dams to enable them harvest rain water to be used during the dry spell and put more land under cultivation. Only one dam is operational and supplies water for irrigation of vegetables and the four greenhouses which are being set up for growing tomatoes and capsicum.

On the other hand, they use chemical sprays to control diseases and pests in vegetables and fruit orchards as well as practice crop rotation.

To get healthy crops, they use organic manure and certified seeds which are disease and pest free.

Deal with experts

https://cdn.standardmedia.co.ke/images/saturday/uvodq0yluz3n1z55fd2d777a429.jpg[I]Dairy farming at the Kamiti Maximum Prison, Freshian and Ashire breeds are kept taken on 16th September 2015.[/I] (PHOTO: WILBERFORCE OKWIRI/ STANDARD)
“We have renovated our cattle dip which was not operational for many years and it has helped us control diseases in our livestock. We also carry out artificial insemination and practice good feeding regimes like feeding them on hay, nappier grass and silage from green maize stocks,”he adds.

According to Ithanzu, the nurseries are normally inspected by the Horticultural Crops Development Authority (HCDA) to ensure that the seedlings are good while the fruit tree nurseries are registered with the same body.

“We work closely with our local universities and other organisations such as the Kenya Agricultural Research and Livestock Organisation, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology and non-governmental organisations like Rodi Kenya and Christian Fellowship,”says Ithanzu.

Students from University of Nairobi, Egerton, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, NYS Yatta School of Agriculture have had an opportunity to practise their field attachment at the farm.

In future, Ithanzu says they plan to start new projects such as bee keeping, fish farming, beef cattle farming, sheep farming and mushroom farming.

“All these will increase our training areas for the inmates and generate more revenue for government,” he says.