Hundreds of government-funded projects across the country that cost taxpayers billions of shillings are rotting away due to non-completion.
The projects which, year in, year out, are referred to as white elephants by Auditor General Edward Ouko in his report, triggered President Uhuru Kenyatta to issue directive that they must be completed before embarking on new ones.
“There will be no new projects that will be embarked on until you complete those that are ongoing…Even if new projects are aligned to the Big Four they cannot be started without express authority from CS or PS of the National Treasury,” Uhuru said on Friday.
A look into the Auditor General’s 2015-2016 report which represents a small fraction of the sorry state of abandoned projects gives an inkling of the wanton wastage by both the National Government and the 47 counties.
Read: Uhuru freezes new projects until ongoing ones are completed
Some are abandoned by contractors after receiving down payments while others under the National Government Constituency Development Fund are often ditched on the election of a new MP.
A classic example of national project is New Mitihani House building, in Nairobi’s South B, which belongs to the Kenya National Examination Council which is yet to be completed 28 years after inception. The building gets a cash allocation every financial year.
Those born when the project was initiated have graduated from university and, if married, probably have school going children.
In 2016, even though the building was reported to be 54 percent complete, the Auditor General said it required an extra Sh2.6 billion to complete. This was according to an engineer’s valuation estimates.
Construction of 144 three bedroom houses for military officers at Kenyatta Barracks in Gilgil has been pending for 13 years.
In 2005 Capital Construction Company was contracted by Ministry of Defence to put up the houses within two years which was later varied by an extra two years at a cost of Sh346 million.
When the project was half complete and Sh295 million already paid to the contractor, the tender was cancelled and a fresh contract awarded, the project cost were revised upwards by an extra Sh660 million.
At the same barracks, a Sh459 million contract for a food processing factory was signed in March 2015. The Auditor-General points out that even though 73 per cent of funds allocated for the plant had been paid out, the project had stalled.
The auditor questions a Sh373 million contract to equip the factory, but to date no equipment has been delivered.
More: What Uhuru’s freeze on new projects means
A Sh316 million contract to construct houses at Embakasi Garrison was awarded in 2013. The project was to be completed within one year but two years later and with Sh265 million already sunk into the project it was yet to be delivered.
The auditor raises questions about a Sh20 billion allocation to the National Irrigation Board for various irrigation schemes, but which cannot be accounted for.
Ouko questioned why the agency wanted an extra Sh15 billion to complete 21 irrigation projects initiated in 2012 for Sh880 million but stalled.
Some of the irrigation schemes that have stalled include: Komo (Sh12m), Lokubae (Sh36m), Lower Nzoia (Sh7m), Maugo (Sh1.4m), Rachuonyo (Sh6.96m), Rahole (Sh1.71m), Rapsu (Sh32.62m), Sio (Sh10.78m), Siso (Sh13.39m), Suba Clusters Irrigation project (Sh1.4m), Subukia (Sh2.4m), Tunyo (Sh9,500 ) and Usueni (Sh1.3 million).
Others are Bura (Sh45.8m), Elelea (Sh4.4m), Hola (Sh7.2m), Kagaari Gaturi (Sh333.9m), Kibwezi (Sh1.1m) and Kieni (Sh24.7m).
Read: Governors blew millions of taxpayer money on white elephant projects - Ouko
In 2009, President Mwai Kibaki kicked off an ambitions project dubbed Miti Mingi, Maisha Bora.
The little known project was meant to increase forest cover in arid and semi-arid areas to promote consistent rainfall and create an environment for sustainable logging.
At the time of its termination in December 2015, Miti Mingi, Maisha Bora had a budget of Sh2.4 billion. The project had by then exhausted Sh1.4 billion or 55 per cent of the total amount received.
“The amount spent as at June 30, 2016 was Sh1.408 billion or 55 per cent of the commitment and Sh131 million remaining as unspent cash in the project account,” Ouko said in his 2015-2016 report.
As a result, he said, the programme may not be able to utilise the remaining Sh1.08 billion as the project already closed adding that consequently, the programme’s goals and outcomes may not have been realised.
The other project, Kenya Water Security and Climate Resilience Project, had a budget of Sh425 million and was to help monitor weather conditions to give early warnings of looming drought and floods.
While the programme is alive it has taken longer than projected to get off the ground or complete.
So noble was the idea that it attracted funding from the Finland government which offered €18.6 million (Sh2.3 billion) in addition to the Kenya government’s €4.1 million (Sh514 million).
The projects were being implemented by the Kenya Forest Service.
Ouko’s reports have also exposed white elephant projects that gobbled up to Sh10 billion of taxpayers’ money with some projects not being executed at all like the Mombasa fertiliser factory that was never built despite being allocated Sh6.3 billion.
In the last financial year, the Ministry of Education was allocated Sh428 million for construction of facilities at eight technical institutions and despite an agreed completion period of two years, all contracts were behind schedule by the time of review by the Auditor General. Shilling 294 million had already been paid out.
More: Auditor General queries millions spent on incomplete projects in Kisumu county
The Star has established that identifying and auditing the abandoned CDF projects mostly under the devolved water, health and market sectors in 290 constituencies has started.
NG-CDF acting CEO Yusuf Mbuno yesterday confirmed that the verification entails establishing the completion status of the projects before calculating the total cost of completion.
“Those projects have to be financed because if they are left, it will be a waste of taxpayers money. We cannot automatically hand them over to county governments to complete because they had not budgeted for them,” Mbuno told Star.
The projects were abandoned in 2016 following the enactment of the new National Government CDF Act limiting the state’s constituency funded projects to education and security.
The Act sought to curb duplication of roles between the national and county governments in implementing various functions outlined in the Fourth Schedule of the new Constitution.
The new Act required the NG-CDF board to ensure constituencies concentrate on programes that fall under the national government from September 2016.
“We had to stop funding functions that do not fall under the national government yet there were many ongoing projects. This posed a challenge since projects were still there but the new law could not allow us to allocate funds for their implementation,” Mbuno said.
