Transport and Infrastructure CS James Macharia has responded to claims that the government only awards tenders to Chinese contractors.
According to reports, only Chinese contractors win the bids despite the government saying that they are open to everyone.
In an interview with Citizen TV, Macharia said that Chinese contractors are awarded tenders because they are cheap and fast in their work.
“When people say we are giving the Chinese, am I going to give a project for the sake of not giving Chinese at Ksh.18 billion when it could have been done at Ksh.7 billion?” Macharia asked.
“For any project we go through a very competitive process and we make sure we do not have to spend more money than we have to. So if some of those projects are won by the Chinese, it is because their bids are a lot more competitive,” he added.
CS Macharia further said that the Chinese bring skilled people to the projects and their cost is low because they manage their cost component very well.
“The speed of their work, they bring skilled people, they put off-site facilities to do pre-casting, they work 24 hours and their cost is low because they manage their cost component very well.”
He went on to give a comparison on work done by a European contractor and that of the Chinese.
“They are very, very fast in terms of making decisions, implementation of projects. This (Nairobi Expressway) was launched by the President in October 2019, now it is 80 percent complete. At the same time, we were discussing with another European consortium to do the Rironi-Mau summit road. We started negotiations in September 2016 and we’ve not finished the negotiations,” Macharia said.
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