NSSF Tassia II plot owners to pay for multi-billion project

What you need to know:

  • The announcement is a departure from the earlier position in which the NSSF was to foot the reported Sh5 billion bill and then recover its cash from plot owners.

Plot owners of the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) Tassia II settlement scheme will be required to finance a controversial multi-billion shilling infrastructure upgrade of the estate.

NSSF chairman Gideon Ndambuki made the announcement yesterday while addressing members at the Fund’s AGM, marking a departure from the earlier position in which the NSSF was to foot the reported Sh5 billion bill and then recover its cash from plot owners.

The planned upgrade was at the centre of controversy which saw former Labour secretary Kazungu Kambi and former NSSF acting chair Richard Langat lose their jobs.

The Tassia estate controversy started when Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Cotu) secretary general Francis Atwoli questioned variation of the contract cost from the initial Sh3.3 billion to Sh5 billion.

Plot owners were expected to pay Sh920,000 each to cater for the infrastructure development, survey and physical planning fees, engineering and design costs and processing of individual title deeds.

The plot owners had initially claimed in court NSSF breached a contract when it increased prices of the plots.

NSSF’s planned infrastructure upgrade includes a 90.4km tarmac road and lighting. The roads are to be fitted with culverts and storm water drainage system.

Mr Langat was suspended from his position as NSSF Managing Trustee after investigations were opened against him by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, (EACC) following his approval of Sh5.053 billion awarded as a tender to a construction company, China Jiangxi International Kenya, for the development of the Tassia housing scheme.

Complaints were raised by Cotu who said that Mr Langat did not have the approval of a rightly constituted board to go ahead with the scheme.

“The Tassia project is the biggest scandal seen by NSSF and we will not sit aside and let the people involved get away with it,” Mr Atwoli said then.

Yesterday Mr Ndambuki claimed the NSSF had made a return on investment of Sh300 million on the land it bought for the Tassia II settlement.

“We have not lost any money. We have collected the Sh2.2 billion we invested and we expected to collect Sh300 more as part of profit,” said Mr Ndambuki.

Mr Atwoli said that a forensic audit commissioned by the NSSF’s board of trustees would establish whether the Tassia project had led the Fund to bleed any money.