•According to the report, the county procured murrum from various landowners to repair several roads in the county.
•In his response, Sang defended the procurement of murrum, saying the purchase was above board, adding that his administration targeted to improve 2,400 kilometres of earth road during the fiscal year.
Image: MATHEWS NDANYI
Nandi taxpayers could have lost Sh6.74 million in the questionable procurement of murrum to repair county roads by the county government.
This even as 490, projects worth Sh1.39 billion initiated by the county government stalled in the 2018-19 financial year.
The revelations emerged during the questioning of Governor Stephen Sang by a Senate oversight committee over the 2018-19 audit queries
The county boss appeared before the Senate County Public Accounts and Investments committee to respond to the queries flagged by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu.
According to the report, the county procured murrum from various landowners to repair several roads in the county.
However, there were several anomalies in the procurement of the item, triggering doubt the money could have been misappropriated.
“The examination of work tickets for vehicles reported having ferried the murrum indicated that the vehicles were stationary on the dates they were cited to have been used,” reads the report.
Further, the auditor revealed that the consignments of the murrum were delivered before the respective contracts were signed with the landowners.
No bills of quantities were prepared to determine the estimated quantities of murrum to be procured.
In addition, the county did not disclose the length of roads on which the murrum was used.
“Inspection and acceptance certificates were not prepared upon delivery of the murrum, which omission suggested that the consignments were not inspected by management before they were paid for,” it adds.
In his response, Sang defended the procurement of murrum, saying the purchase was above board, adding that his administration targeted to improve 2,400 kilometres of earth road during the fiscal year.
He denied the auditor’s observation that the vehicles that reportedly ferried the murrum were stationary.
He said all the vehicles that transported the murrum were properly ticketed.
Sang explained that the bills of quantities for murrum works were generated at the sub county level and the same was used during the inspection by the sub county inspection team.
The inspection report was used for payment for works
“All deliveries made at the sub county level were approved by the inspection team appointed by the accounting officer,” he said.
Auditors who scrutinised the county’s financial books said the county had not provided the documentation at the time of the audit.
“Why did you not provide the auditor? The law says you must provide them or give a reason for not doing so,” committee chairman Ochillo Ayacko (Migori) asked.
Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei said the document presented to the committee could have been ‘cooked’ questioning why they had suddenly emerged yet they were not availed during the time of audit.
“This issue of murrum is baffling. There are concerns that some contractors were supplying to the county the same murrum that had already been delivered,” he said.
Nandi denied the documents were faked, saying that the delay to process the documents was caused by the long period to process them at the sub-county level.
According to the report, the county initiated 491 projects but only one had been completed, though it had not been put to use, at the time of audit.
“Given the unsatisfactory performance in implementing the projects, Nandi residents did not obtain any tangible service or value from the 491 projects planned for execution by the county executive during the year,” the report read in part.
Sang submitted that delays in identification of project sites, acquisition of relevant land approvals and way leave approvals caused the problem.
“Some contractors did not report to the site leading to a delay in the implementation of the projects,” he said.
“Several projects that contractors did not report to the site were in the process of being retendered.”
He said all the projects that were yet to start and in 2018-19 were re-budgeted for in the subsequent financial year as works in progress and are now ongoing and were at different levels as at the end of the first quarter.
However, the committee took issue with his response, questioning whether he did not conduct public participation to identify project sites.
Cherargei took on the governor, saying that the list of projects he had listed were full of generalities and are not specific projects.
“My own observation is that most of these projects are just names of places in Nandi. These are ghost projects and this is how Nandi is losing money,” he said.
However, the governor said his senator had overstretched his ‘gymnastics,” and that the projects are factual and challenged him to visit them.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris