Tues 9th August 2022, Election Day
Kenya Power single-sourced for a contractor to carry out a Sh15 billion rural electrification project despite the National Treasury stating that it would not guarantee the project in case of a default.A court found that Kenya Power (KP) ignored regulations that require State projects to be procured in a free, fair and competitive bidding process.In what High Court Judge John Mativo called “a perennial issue bedeviling government projects”, KP locked out local contractors in favour of a Chinese consortium of companies on the basis that the project was pegged on a bilateral agreement and was therefore not subject to procurement laws.This is the same flawed argument that Kenya Railways had used in its defence before being rebuked by the Court of Appeal for illegally hiring a Chinese firm to take up the Sh500 billion Standard Gauge Railway project.