Is Kebs culpable for contraband goods across the country?

It is the duty of the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) to guarantee quality and ensure that whatever gets into the Kenyan market meets safety requirements. Yet for as long as many can remember, Kebs exists only in name. It is an institution on which billions of shillings of taxpayers’ money is spent annually without any returns.

The first obvious sign that either the standards body is out of its depth or complicit in corruption became evident when cheap battery brands flooded the country and consequently led to the closure and relocation of the giant household name Eveready that had dominated the Kenyan market for long.