I always call-out idiots on both sides of the political divide and I'm measured in my condemnation of both. In addressing the political elites from Mt. Kenya, I address them taking cognizance of their education and general outlook. After all, i met many in University of Nairobi as a student and a teacher. I always take judicial notice of their political awareness and education. The rare moments i address Hon Sudi and his ilk, i address him as I address the herdersmen who look after my camel in Bangal...slowly, carefully, a calibrated mix of multiple languages here and there, few sign language, draw images on the sand, show photos from phone while gesturing and nodding...hopping and praying the message will not be lost in translation. It isn't easy but we have a cardinal duty to breakdown difficult ideas and simplify it for the less fortunate members of our community who were born before President Mwai Kibaki introduced free compulsory primary education. Both Hon Sudi and My herdersmen in Bangal are smart, good and decent men. Unfortunately, both just didn't have relatives to take them to primary school. It will cruel on our part to treat my herdsmen and Hon. Sudi as children of a lesser god. I for one refuse to do so!
Hon. Duale,
I build information systems for a living, so let me speak to you not as a politician but as the technical man in the room because the defence you have mounted is legally tidy and technically hollow.
You have answered the wrong question.
The country did not ask whether the two per cent fee is legal.
Everyone can see it is gazetted.
The country asked whether it should exist and who was positioned to collect it before the ink dried.
“Parliament approved it” is not a rebuttal to that, it is a confession that the charge was written into law rather than won in a tender.
Let me put it in terms my clients understand.
When an organisation buys an ERP, it pays once to build it and a maintenance fee to keep it running.
It does not then pay a toll every time a clerk writes a record into a database it already owns.
You have built the health rail with public money and then legislated a turnstile on it and pegged the turnstile to two per cent of the value passing through.
That is not “a capped fee for the use of a system,” as you put it.
The KES 5,000 cap limits a single claim; it does nothing to the aggregate.
As enrolment grows and claim volumes rise, that revenue line grows with them, automatically, forever.
You have not priced a service.
You have indexed a private income to the size of the national health budget.
Call that what it is.
You defend the arrangement by noting the law “permits sub-contracting.”
When a man reaches for the sub-contract to justify the deal, he is protecting whoever sits beneath the consortium and earns the percentage.
You told us where to look.
Here is the technical truth beneath the legal language: when you write the revenue model a fixed percentage, a named “Data Exchange Component,” a specific architecture into a regulation, you have not run a procurement.
Any of us who has sat on the other side of a Microsoft or Oracle negotiation knows exactly what a vendor lock written into law looks like and this is it, only worse, because the customer here cannot walk away.
Every Kenyan is the captive user.
I will grant you the one thing you are right about.
UHC cannot run on paper, and digitisation is not the enemy I would be the last man to argue it.
But that is not the fight, and you know it.
The fight is whether a public health system, once built with public money, should carry a private, volume-linked toll written into the law itself, and whether the hand collecting it earned that place on merit or was simply named in advance.
You closed by saying every shilling under Taifa Care belongs to the Kenyan patient.
You wrote that one paragraph after explaining the two per cent that does not.
Yours, in candour,
Njoroge from Kingeero.
Right. How was this Finsprint (affiliate of Pesaprint?) sourced? What was its history? What other projects has it delivered? At the time of award, what was its experience? Does it have other clients? Like who? What was the tender number? How was the evaluation done? If sole-sourced, was there a waiver? Who approved it? On what grounds? Who are the owners? Why 2%? What's the total cost equation for that number? Who does its performance evaluation and how often?
What's the technology stack it brings to the transaction? Is this stack proprietary or available on the open market?
I think the issue isn't that the company exists or that it exists or that it was contracted. The issue is about its bona fides, the legitimacy of the sourcing process, its control and ownership, and value for money.
MyRafiki MyBro Lee Kinyanjui, what happened to you? Since you joined the man you always called eccentric, irredeemable thief and tribal buffoon, you became more Rutonised than Kasongo himself. You have no mouth to condemn your incorrigibly chaotic cabinet colleagues Duale & Murkomen, or even your party honcho Omar Hassan and his ilk Farah Maalim. You know how I trusted you, in particular. Why are you trading selective amnesia? My friend, you were once a hope of a promise. Tùtigithie ùgege wa Rutoism! We take solace that #TumainiLiko #FagiaWakoraWote #TuokoeKenya #RutoMustGo
You can listen to Hon Sudi and get zero of what he is trying to communicate, despite his best effort...for he rarely says something that captures the attention of anyone who attained class 8 education. We need sober, mature leaders not ranting rabble-rousers.