Agencies, assemblies looking the other way in war against corruption

President Uhuru Kenyatta [Photo: Courtesy]

On Wednesday, President Uhuru Kenyatta presided over the sixth session of the National and County Governments Co-coordinating Summit.

As he addressed the governors, he warned against wastage of resources at the county, an ill that has bedeviled county administrations since the start of the devolved units of government.

“It is our joint responsibility as the Executive to ensure the resources given to us are used responsibly,” he said at the meeting held at State House, Nairobi.

In the audience were elected leaders, some of whom have overseen the plunder of public resources and while doing so, co-opted whole county assemblies and anti-graft agencies in well thought out looting sprees.

Investigations by Sunday Standard show the plunder of resources is a long con, which ropes in every key decision maker in the county hierarchy. This includes the county assembly speaker, the clerk, the members of county assembly (MCAs), including chairs of key committees such as PAC and PIC.

“Oversight is never the intention of many of those who make it to the county assembly. It becomes a matter of how much can we make from the executive or how much we can be paid to ignore obvious malpractices,” a first term MCA in Kisii said.

A good example was a case from last December, where a quorum to debate missing Sh110 million was never attained.

“People were being given small money to skip the sittings. In the end, those matters were never discussed,” the MCA said.

Flouts in procurement laws and procedures within the county has led to the disbursement of money to ghost development projects, many touching on early childhood education, cultural services, ICT and water projects.

The back bone

For example, the county’s 2014/15 County Budget Review Outlook Paper noted that more than Sh25 million was spent on upgrading the county offices’ ICT infrastructure. A year later, similar ICT upgrades are included in the 2016/17 budget with a few minor adjustments. This time, the total spent on ICT adding up to more than Sh52 million.

A closer inspection of the county’s budgets and budget review and outlook papers shows similar cases of project duplication with money allocated and paid out. Projects grossly affected by this touch on the back bone of the county’s economy and future - agriculture, fisheries, early childhood education and water.

Since 2013, Kisii has received billions from the central government for devolution. Yet, like many other counties, the landscape is dotted with incomplete projects in which more money is pumped every financial year.

An Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission County Corruption (EACC) index report ranked Kisii as the 13th most corrupt county.

However, complaint letters from several current and former employees of the county government in the possession of Sunday Standard accuse the regional EACC office of complacency in handling graft.

The letters detail fraudulent, unlawful and irregular procurement of goods and services leading to the loss of public funds with little or  no action by the EACC. When contacted, Kisii EACC boss Abraham Kemboi refused to comment.

“I do not have any authorisation to speak to you on these matters. I will need clearance from our Nairobi office,” Kemboi said. 

The letters to the DCI and DPP also complain of the lack of oversight by the MCAs, alleging that many of them owed their allegiance to Governor James Ongwae and are easily swayed through coercion to look the other way or hand in incomplete reports on matters of the county under investigation.