- The tender in question was issued on February 12, 2018 to Testimony Enterprise.
- Karanja told court he was not involved in the tendering process but he prepared interim payment certificates totalling to Sh88 million.
Image: FILE
A witness in the Sh588 million Kiambu graft case has told court he would not know whether payments for the roads contract were processed without the required documents.
Peter Karanja Njenga, senior superintendent engineer at the county, told magistrate Thomas Nzyuki that the accountant, who is set to testify, would be in a better position to address that.
Karanja also said before the roads tender was disrupted by the investigations, road works were done as per the required standards.
He was testifying against former Kiambu governor Ferdinand Waititu, his wife Susan Wangari and 11 others facing trial over the irregular award of Sh588,198,328.20 roads tender in the county.
The tender in question was issued on February 12, 2018, and awarded to Testimony Enterprise owned by directors Charles Chege and Beth Wangeci, after quoting Sh588 million.
It was for upgrading of various gravel roads in Thika, Limuru, Gatundu North, Juja and Ruiru subcounties during the financial year 2017-18.
After the award, the company allegedly gave Waititu a kickback of Sh25.6 million.
Karanja told the anti-corruption court he was not involved in the tendering process but he prepared interim payment certificates totalling Sh88 million. He was however involved in the supervision of the project.
The certificates, he said, were raised after the contractor (Testimony) did a substantial amount of work and in accordance with what’s stipulated in the contract.
“The certificate would be raised by the contractor to the employer. I wouldn’t know if any payment was processed without an interim certificate," he said.
"The accountant would be in a better position to answer that but no interim certificate can be prepared before work is done.”
Asked whether the road works were approved by relevant agencies, the witness said “it was a procurement procedure.”
On Monday, former Kiambu Roads executive told the court there was no budgetary allocation for the upgrading of various gravel roads in Thika, Limuru, Gatundu North, Juja and Ruiru subcounties.
John Mugwe said it was not proper for the tendering of the roads to be opened due to the budget.
He also said the Cabinet paper, dated January 24, 2018, which proposed improvement of county gravel roads using soil stabilisation technology, was never tabled for discussion yet the improvements were done.
(edited by Amol Awuor)