• Blames professionals for not raising questions
• There is a huge variation between the tender price and engineers' price. Who is fooling who?
ANC leader Musalia Mudavadi on Friday said the proposed 57 dams were premeditated to siphon billions of shillings from public coffers.
Addressing professionals in Mombasa, Mudavadi said it was suspect from the start that the Jubilee administration could achieve such a fete in five years.
He said even the biggest economies in the world, including China, the US, and Saudi Arabia, with all their oil money, cannot achieve this.
“Can anyone here or elsewhere point out a major economy or country anywhere in the world that has committed to such a target over the same time frame,” Mudavadi said.
Speaking while closing the first inter-professional summit at PrideInn Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, the former Finance minister said Kenya lacks the technical and financial capacity to undertake such a monumental venture.
It is unfortunate that the same dams were supposed to help people who are now dying of hunger because of drought.
“You cannot help being saddened by the wickedness that informed some of these projects,” Mudavadi said.
The government has denied that anyone has died of hunger.
This is despite reported deaths of at least 20 people in Baringo and Turkana counties.
Mudavadi said over the past six years, an estimated Sh165 billion has been spent on dams.
“There have been no geological surveys and no designs. There have been poor site conditions with underground caves leading to heavy losses," he said.
“There have been abnormal variations in cost and compensations that defy logic. Sometimes there have been multiple design reviews, each of which has attracted horrendous fees.”
He questioned the silence of professional bodies.
Like Deputy President William Ruto, who opened the summit on Wednesday, Mudavadi laid some of the blame on professionals and professional bodies for the wanton corruption.
Quoting examples of dams where money has been misappropriated, Mudavadi mentioned Badasa Dam in Marsabit county, which he said was allocated Sh1.9 billion.
He said the cost was increased to Sh1.6 billion without justification. There was no feasibility study, no geological survey and the design was faulty, among other issues, he said.
“Ironically, when the excavation process started, some of the heavy earth moving equipment started sinking on the ground instead of excavating,” Mudavadi said.
The project was abandoned after billions had already been sunk into it. Now a proposed revival has been mooted, he noted.
In Kajiado county, Kiserian Dam is located at the downstream of a sprawling slum where there is heavy sewerage discharge into the proposed site.
“More than a billion shillings has gone and the county government of Kajiado is talking of looking for more money for that dam,” Mudavadi said.
Chemosusu Dam in Baringo county, he said, has suffered a major increase in pricing by up to Sh1.6 billion.
“There is a huge variation between the tender price and the price by the engineers. Who is wrong or who is fooling who?” he said.
In Kitui, Guma Dam stalled after Sh575 million had been paid. This year a variation of Sh1.9 billion was made to revive the project, Mudavadi noted.
“Once again, the question is why this abnormal variations and where are the professionals?” he said.
In the Transport and Infrastructure ministry, there is Sh180 billion in pending bills as opposed to a budgetary provision of about Sh60 billion.
“The gap between the two figures is obviously a factor of graft,” he said.