Tough week ahead for embattled Ruto

• Agriculture minister William Ruto starts the week a troubled man as the House Business Committee ponders over a motion to force him out

“This motion is of national interest and we hope HBC will give it priority,” the MP said.

Mr Linturi said all the promises the government had made to maize available to Kenyans had flopped, including the subsidised flour which was to retail at Sh130 for a five-kilogramme packet.

“This unga has not reached my constituency and my voters are starving,” the MP said when reached on phone.

Stabilise prices

The scandal was first exposed by the Sunday Nation last December when the government released 400,000 bags of maize to eight large-scale millers to stabilise maize flour prices which had risen to Sh120 from Sh70.

A week later, it was revealed that some businessmen and briefcase millers had been allocated a further 80,000 bags of maize at the expense of genuine millers and subsequently sold the maize to Southern Sudan. Among the briefcase millers were MPs.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Nation has established that the ministry gave one of the millers a contract to single-source for the bags to pack the subsidised flour at an estimated Sh1 million.

The bags are reported to have been acquired from a local company and distributed to all the millers who were milling the cheap flour for the government.

Mr Diamond Lalji, who is also the chairman of the Cereal Millers Association confirmed that his company had been given the contract to supply the bags.

He however said he could not remember how much money his company was paid to supply the bags to the Board, as he was not in Nairobi when contacted.