Millions spent in lavish training for parastatals

Millions of shillings are being spent to train parastatal board members at a coastal resort.

It will cost Sh60,000, exclusive of transport and out-of-pocket allowance, to train every board member from each of the 216 State corporations on the Mwongozo platform on parastatal reforms.

The training started on September 28 and will end on December 5. The 216 parastatals are divided into 32 of between seven and eight. Each session lasts three days.

The Mwongozo Platform is a code of governance for government-owned entities.

It was developed by the Presidential Task Force on Parastatal Reforms and came up with recommendations for merging parastatals to help cut the public wage bill.

The task force was set up by President Uhuru Kenyatta in 2013 and was co-chaired by the president’s senior constitutional and legal adviser, Mr Abdikadir Mohammed, and Group Managing Director, Commercial Bank of Africa, Mr Isaac Awuondo.

EXCESSIVE SPENDING

In a letter on September 16, State Corporations Advisory Committee Secretary Jane Mugambi told all chief executives of State corporations to pay to Mombasa Continental Resort for full board accommodation for three days, conferencing, facilitators and training materials for each board member. “This excludes transport to and from the venue,” Ms Mugambi said.

The money is to be paid to the resort’s account at NIC Bank City Centre branch three days before the training.

Assuming that each State corporation, conservatively, has an average of five board members, the institutions will each part with Sh300,000 for the training, excluding the cost of flight to Mombasa and back, as well as ground transport to and from the venue.

A parastatal like Tana and Athi Rivers Development Authority, which is among the 216 listed for the training, has 12 board members, while the Kenya Film Classification Board has eight members of the board of directors.

The Coffee Development Fund, also listed for the training, has nine board members. The training schedule also incorporates public universities council members.

Kenya Airways, the preferred mode of transport for the government, charges approximately Sh18,000 per person return flight to Mombasa, translating to Sh90,000 for five board of directors.

LEGAL REDRESS

This translates to Sh19.4 million on air transport to Mombasa by the time the training ends on December 5.

The parastatals also have to pay each board member an out-of-pocket allowance. Sunday Nation was also told that some staff of State Corporations Advisory Committee have travelled to Mombasa, when we called to get a comment.

Critics say the trainings could have been held at the Kenya School of Government, Nairobi, at much reduced cost.

According to Mr Stephen Mutoro, secretary-general of Consumers Federation of Kenya, there is no justification why public universities, with better in-house trainers and facilitators, should be grouped here.

“Nearly 90 per cent of the parastatals are headquartered in Nairobi. Why was the trainings conducted in Mombasa? If these funds did not exist in the budgets of States corporations, would there be a supplementary budget to reimburse the same?" Mr Mutoro asked in a letter to President Kenyatta’s Chief of Staff and Head of Public Service, Mr Joseph Kinyua.

Cofek has threatened to seek legal redress on the issue, saying the majority of the boards of State corporations who were appointed just months ago have already conducted own induction and been appraised on “Mwongozo”.