Today's Headlines
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- Country to Review Tourism Law
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- Taking Up a Women's Agenda
- More Than 6,000 Christian Youth Converge for Prayers
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- Man Charged With Abduction of Two Catholic Sisters
- UN Censures State On Torture
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- Riepa Hosts Business Association
- ICTR Petitions UN for Arrest of Kabuga
- UBA to Invest SH360 Billion in Kenya
- Free Movement of People Too, Not Just Goods and Capital
- Judges Running Out of Money?
The Nation (Nairobi)
October 2, 2008
News Article By Cosmas Butunyi
More than Sh123 million of the Constituency Development Fund given to six constituencies cannot be accounted for.
These are some of the startling revelations in the latest report by the Controller and Auditor-General. Also exposed is the wanton flouting of government procedures in awarding of tenders for CDF projects.
The worst case is in Saboti, where Sh56,359,045 has been spent without a trace.
"No supporting documents were made available for verification to support the disbursement," the report by Ms Priscilla Komora reads in part.
The same state of affairs was found in Kajiado Central and Kimilili CDF committees.
Only Sh3.3 million out of the Sh37,244,128 allocated to Kajiado Central was accounted for. In Kimilili, no evidence for allocation of Sh18,855,000 to projects exists.
In Mbita and Gachoka, no regard has been given to the Government's tendering procedures. According to the report, contracts were awarded without competitive bidding.
"It is not clear how the contractors were identified and selected," the report notes.
However, a Mbita district development officer defended the decision to avoid open tendering to award Sh12 million to two companies to supply school furniture, saying it was meant "to promote the local business community".
In Gachoka, an unnamed Nairobi-based company was irregularly awarded a Sh1.1-million tender to scoop a dam and construct six others. The CDF committee paid Sh821,000 long before the works began.
Profit motives
The contractor then left the site even before work started. By March last year, over a year after its slated time of completion, no work had been done on the six dams and the contractor could not be traced.
The audit report also unearthed cases where CDF is used to fund private businesses or is diverted for personal gain.
A case in point is the Funyula CDF, which has disbursed over Sh1 million to Funyula Financial Services Association, a microfinance institution run by individuals with profit motives.
The criteria used for arriving at some of the projects remained a mystery.
