Contractors suffer due to politics, not limited capacity

Nashon Okowa

The intrigues surrounding Arror and Kimwarer dam projects are now known to nearly every Kenyan. It is not my object to wade into the murky discourse as to whether we have got value for our money or whether money has been lost or not. However, I marveled as to how the foreign contractor was easily awarded these contracts of nearly Sh91 billion, including Itaare dam, at the expense of local firms. I bet not the same treatment would have been accorded a local contractor. In the negotiation of development concessional loans, I fail to understand why government cannot always put their foot down to insist on the contractor being local. Better part of the loan is repatriated back to the contractor parent country on top of us still paying the loan. What is the obsession with these foreign contractors? 

There is a tired argument that has been fronted over the years now that we don’t have capacity locally to undertake mega projects. Yet the National Construction Authority (NCA) records show that we have local NCA 1 category contractors, which the authority certifies as capable of undertaking unlimited contract value projects. So what is this indolent argument being perpetuated? It worsens when such arguments come from the very people we have bestowed responsibility to make things better locally. People with legislative and executive powers to deliberately put measure that can hasten local contractor’s growth. Instead, they lament like everyone else and reason as if capacity can instantly be purchased at a shop or somehow it will drop down like manna one day. How do we want our contractors to build capacity without being accorded opportunity to undertake such projects? It’s akin to being expected to gain work experience when you are unemployed.