How ‘prayerful’ woman obtained Sh42m Kemsa tender
A supplier who benefited from the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) is now looking forward to importing Coronavirus vaccine after “God revealed to her in a prayer” that there is an opportunity.
Eunice Cherono, proprietor of Leon Interiors Décor, told a parliamentary committee that she is a pious Christian, who believes in miracles.
“This morning in my intersession, it was communicated to me that something big is coming. The first thing that came to my mind was that the vaccine could be the thing,” Cherono said when she appeared before the National Assembly’s Public Investments Committee, currently probing the supply of Covid-19 related materials to Kemsa.
Cherono, a trained nurse, said she is in already conducting research on how to import Covid-9 jab, since it is now clear there is an opening. Cherono’s firm was awarded a tender to supply Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) worth Sh42 million.
She stunned the committee when she said her company was facing serious financial challenges when she applied for the tender.
“I walked to Kemsa without any money but had faith that God would provide and indeed the almighty intervened and I succeeded,” Cherono told the committee.
“God does miracles and with faith anything can happen. It is through the will of the almighty that I won the tender even without funds,” she told the committee chaired by Mvita MP Abdulswamad Nassir.
She, however, said she had to look for a partner to finance the deal, a response that did not go down well with the legislators.
The MPs asked if at all it was her company that made the supplies or that she sold the tender to the financier.
The partner, Mason and Austin Limited, financed the deal though it was Lean, who made the supplies and received the payments.
Tender documents
Asked by Kaloleni MP Paula Katana to confirm whether her company ever made any supplies or that she sold the tender documents to the financier, Cheromo maintained that she was the tenderer and was the only one in contact with Kemsa authorities.
There was a showdown during the afternoon session when MPs Babu Owino, (Embakasi East) and Mary Wamaua (Maragua) engaged in a verbal exchange after the former was accused of guiding a witness.
An irate Wamau accused her colleague of gesturing Elizabeth Seret, the Managing Director of Duke Agencies on how to respond to questions.
Owino had asked the committee chairman to end the session, as members were already starving after sitting throughout lunchtime.
This did not auger well with Wamaua, who told her colleague to exit if he was tired. A charged Owino hit back, saying he could not take anything from a “village” Member of Parliament.
“I am a city MP. I cannot be lectured by a villager. Chairman you must protect all of us from these people who just sit here to harass witnesses,” Owino said before Nassir intervened, saying such matters should be discussed internally.
As the session continued, Seret told the committee that directors of her company include her two sons, aged below 18. Seret whose company supplied Covid related materials to Kemsa worth Sh180 million, was paid three weeks after delivering.
Meanwhile, former anti-graft czar Halake Waqo failed to show up before the committee after he was summoned to respond to claims that he financed Azzure Limited to supply Covid related materials to Kemsa.
Waqo has been another date to appear on Friday.
