NYS paid Sh0.5 million to service private vehicle booked as a GK

NAIROBI: The National Youth Service (NYS) continues to attract national attention following unexplained disappearance of hundreds of millions of shillings.

The scams paint the picture of an all-important public institution where the law is not as important as the selfish interests of people who have been mandated to manage it.

The work ethics at the institution is a classic case of runaway impunity, blatant insubordination and gross incompetence all aimed at selfish comfort at the expense of public good.

And the mismanagement is not limited to money. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) is already investigating a case involving senior officers using NYS funds to run and service their individual motor vehicles.

One of the NYS vehicles GK Z 185 is alleged to have been taken for service on June 3, 2014, yet official government records show the same car was operating between NYS headquarters, Riverside Drive, Westlands and Community area for the period it was purported to be at the garage.

Documents in possession of EACC, copies of which we have seen, indicate that it was actually a private vehicle KBS 475S which had been booked in as GK Z185.
NYS paid almost Sh500,000 million for the servicing of this car.

The Registrar of Motor Vehicles has already confirmed to EACC, through a copy of records dated Oct 12, 2015, that vehicle registration number KBS 475S, a black Land Rover Station Wagon, belongs to a senior officer at NYS.

In another case that has continued to baffle both insiders and outsiders, junior officers at the NYS have the guts to defy orders from their bosses. Some officers who were transferred more than a year ago still report to NYS on a daily basis, have kept their work stations and vehicles and even commit the institution financially on many projects.

At the same time, the NYS Director General Nelson Githinji continues to assign responsibilities to officers who do not officially work for NYS, having personally transferred the same officers months ago.

Just a week ago, The Standard on Sunday received reports of how a senior NYS official took a contractor by the name Gitau Mungai to Mombasa to allegedly show him a market he would be awarded to construct, yet the project hadnot been advertised.

Other senior officers are also reported to have diverted at least 828 rolls of chain link meant for use in at least three NYS stations in the Coast region into private use.