PAC Grills City Contractors Over Stalled, Delayed Projects
The Nairobi County Assembly Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has put to task road contractors and Procurement officers over failure to deliver on county projects despite payments.
The Committee is investigating allegations of interference in procurement processes, double issuance of tenders for the same roads and late delivery of projects by the contractors.
This follows the Auditor Generals 2019 report that had flagged off the road projects worth hundreds of millions that probably may not have given Kenyans value for their money.
Wilfred Odalo the Chairman of PAC said that the committee had noted with concern the deliberate failure to honour contractual agreements by the said firms.
”Examination of various projects status reports revealed that projects with a combined contract sum of Kshs.1.8 billion have stalled or delayed,” said Odalo
From the documents presented before the committee the County’s Regional Engineer Mr. Michael Nderitu found himself at the Centre of the discussion after it emerged that his office had failed to ensure that contractors observed contractual agreements.
The probe revealed shocking dealings involving UBA Construction limited that was awarded a Ksh 193 million tender to renovate a five-kilometer section of a road that didn’t exists at the time.
“How can you renovate a road that has not been there previously? I understand that renovations are only done on roads that were previously there?” asked Baba Dogo MCA Geofrey Majiwa who is a member of the committee.
Documents show that despite the company failing to h0nour its timelines in delivering the first ‘renovation’ project it was awarded another tender of building the road despite being among the highest bidders.
“Clearly you can see the company used Ksh40Million to build a kilometre of the road” said Wilfred Odalo the Chairman of the committee.
The probe is scrutinizing road tenders that were awarded under unclear circumstances dating back to 2015.
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