Ruto: No governor was forced to sign medical program

President William Ruto has denied claims that some governors were forced to sign the deals for the National Equipment Service Program (NESP).

NESP seeks to supply medical equipment to country governments.

“Anybody who says that they were forced by the national government to sign whatever contract are liars,” he said.

“There is nobody who forced them to sign any contract.”

He maintained that governors voluntarily entered into the contract with suppliers.

He added that there are seven suppliers involved in the scheme.

Ruto condemned the claimants adding;

“You would be a fool to be forced to sign the wrong thing and then come and talk about it.”

The President added that the procurement process to get the seven suppliers was done regularly.

He added that there will be no room for corruption and fraud in the program and in the larger Social Health Authority (SHA) program.

“There will be no fraud. We have costed the equipment, we have costed the drugs, we have costed the services with experts. There was a procurement process between the counties and the Ministry of Health,” he said.

“There is no obligation on any county to get any equipment from any suppliers. There is no one supplier. I think there are seven.”

This comes after some governors claimed that they had been coerced to enter into the agreements.

Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga took the concerns about the program to the Senate.

Kahiga told the Senate that the county bosses had no choice in the matter of onboarding to the program.

“Did we have a choice? The program is even open to private facilities. What happens if you do not join? Did we have a choice?” Kahiga asked.

The Ministry of Health and the Council of Governors Chairperson Ahmed Abdullahi however sought to walk back sentiments from Kahiga.

In a statement, MoH and CoG indicated that the counties would get the medical equipment under the Fee-For-Service (FFS) model that allows vendors to supply, maintain and upgrade state-of-the-art equipment at no cost to county health facilities.

They said the contractors are to be paid for services under gazetted SHA Tariffs.

“NESP arrangement is the best option we had under the circumstances,” Abdullahi said.