Shame of Sh45bn lost to dead projects

A man harvesting maize on a farm in Galana-Kulalu, Tana River County, on September 9, 2015. The government’s Galana-Kulalu Food Security Project was a massive failure. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The less-known projects are giving stiff competition to their big brothers in the race to bleed taxpayers’ coffers dry.

  • The report reveals that most of Sh49.8 billion the government had budgeted for 39 projects was swallowed up, with little to write home about.

  • After paying Sh373 million, Kenyans could not get what they were promised.

Kenyans are accustomed to news of billions gone to waste in ghost projects. However, there are smaller schemes slowly but steadily chipping away at taxpayers’ coffers.

The less-known projects are giving stiff competition to their big brothers in the race to bleed taxpayers’ coffers dry.

Less amounts are lost in these smaller projects, but at a high frequency.

SH45 BILLION

The Nation has analysed Auditor-General Edward Ouko’s reports for 2013 to 2017 and identified at least 50 projects by State corporations that either never took off or stalled, with at least Sh45 billion of taxpayers’ money going down the drain.

Mr Ouko, in his reports for many of the projects traced by the Nation, says the affected State firms and agencies “did not obtain value for money on the expenditure”.

In some instances, documents that would help confirm whether value for money was obtained were not made available for scrutiny.

The report reveals that most of Sh49.8 billion the government had budgeted for 39 projects was swallowed up, with little to write home about.

Mr Robert Shaw, a public policy and economy analyst and columnist for the Nation said:

THEFT

“First, what it shows is that this theft from the State is throughout the whole of the body politic. It is pervasive. Cumulatively, I would hazard a guess that if one added the 50 or so (projects) up, factor in an additional amount for what hasn’t been discovered yet and maybe other so-called projects then one is likely to have a figure that makes the dams scams look modest.”

In some cases, donors’ funds also suffered a similar fate, as was seen with the Miti Mingi and Maisha Bora project.

The project was meant to increase Kenya’s forest cover with sustainable logging in a country where illegal tree cutting carries the day.

After receiving Sh2.4 billion, most of which was donated by Finland’s government, there were just a handful of trees planted with a couple of saw mills launched.

LOGGING

President Uhuru Kenyatta last year banned logging countrywide, as Kenya suffers erratic climate change caused by decreased forest cover.

Government departments also wasted money on unnecessary trips and allowances.

For example, during the 2016-2017 financial year, the Kenya Maritime Authority paid its board members Sh5.8 million for attending official functions.

But when the Auditor-General dug deeper, he discovered that some of the functions board members received allowances for were the burial of an unnamed principal secretary’s relative, a courtesy call on Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho, a benchmarking trip to Thailand and a number of corporate social responsibility events.

FOREIGN TRIPS

The Kenya Maritime Authority also went on to pay another Sh14 million in allowances for unplanned foreign trips though provisions of the Mwongozo Act require State agency bosses to strictly stick to work plans documenting all movements for any given financial year.

Only a few months earlier, the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute hired a local firm to put up a Sh373 million leather-processing plant.

Things were looking up for the leather industry.

But by October 2016, that had drastically changed. As it turned out, the firm selected was not qualified for the contract.

Aside from being registered less than three years before the tender was floated, the firm went on to subcontract an Italian firm to carry out the project.

TENDERS

Kenya’s procurement laws require firms bidding for government tenders to provide their financial statements for three years before bidding. This means bidding firms must be at least three years old.

Somehow, some machines that were to be installed in the processing plant could not fit in the premises and hence ended up gathering dust in storage space.

After paying Sh373 million, Kenyans could not get what they were promised.

But these are just three cases in hundreds where management goofs, graft and laissez faire handling of projects in some State agencies saw Kenyans bleed no less than Sh45 billion in just five years.

SH13.5 MILLION

In the same financial year, counties returned to the exchequer Sh13.5 million meant for feeding families hit by drought.

This meant that in a year that saw 1.5 million hit by starvation owing to drought, counties were unable to exhaust money meant to feed the hungry in arid areas.

It was also the same financial year when the Kenya Wildlife Service supplied water to wild animals to avert their looming death from thirst.