Civil society wants EPRA charged with contempt of court

Nairobi Monday July 3, 2023

by Joseph Ng’ang’a

The Kenya National Civil Society Centre (KNCSC) Executive Director Suba Churchill has called on the Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah and his fellow litigants in the case challenging the legality and constitutionality of the Finance Act 2023 to move to the High Court with speed and cite the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) for contempt of court.

This is after the state regulator went ahead to increase the retail price of petroleum fuel products on account of the Finance Act, 2023, even after the Court had halted implementation of the same.

“At the same time, KNCSC has called on Kenyans who have bought fuel at the reviewed higher prices to demand and insist on being issued with a receipt to facilitate claims of refunds that may accrue should the court find that EPRA acted with impunity and in contempt of court by raising fuel prices in total disregard of orders of the High Court,” said Suba in a statement.

He said that EPRA has since sought to explain its reasons for the upward review of pump prices saying that “because we were not a party to the suit and have not been served with the court order.”

“Such excuses are not only spurious and illegitimate, but also serve to demonstrate the depths of impunity to which the Kenya Kwanza administration has sunk in a matter of months of taking over the reins of the government,” he said.

Suba said that they find it phony and insensitive that a State regulator in charge of a sensitive docket as EPRA can still muster the audacity to claim that it acted in contempt of Court because “we had not been served with the Court order” in a matter that is of such great public interest and on which the High Court pronouncement and order putting its implementation on hold reverberated across the country like a tsunami.

“Such acts of defiance, added to the fact that Kenyans in their individual and collective capacities openly and unreservedly expressed their opposition to State machinations to increase value-added tax (VAT) on fuel from 8 to 16 per cent alongside numerous other additional taxes under the Finance Bill, even before it was assented into law, only serves to demonstrate the high levels of contempt with which the Kenya Kwanza regime as a whole holds the Kenyan people and independent institutions established under the Constitution like courts of law to ensure checks and balances in the exercise of delegated State power,” said Suba.         

Courtesy ; K. N. A