President Uhuru Kenyatta received three letters this month. Two were petitions, which were stamped ‘received’ at the Office of the President. The petitions seek the dissolution of Homa Bay county. One letter, published in this column, escalates the war on corruption. The letters affirm disenchantment with corruption, legislative anarchy, and paralysis in the county executive.
The calls came when the President was visiting Kisumu and Siaya counties. The Homa Bay leg of the visit was deferred, due to a tight presidential schedule. The launch of universal healthcare coverage in Kisumu took precedent. When the President visited Kisumu, it was right he should know the fortunes of devolution in the region. The feedback is important after six years of devolution. This also comes after Treasury injection of about Sh30 billion in Homa Bay.
Apart from salaries, which the county government pays irregularly, and bench-marking and bed-marking allowances, it is a civil duty to establish infrastructural gains this far. The feedback is essential in assessing the state of devolution. Other diplomatic ways have been tried to address the massive plunder of public funds, but have not produced expected results. Surrender to threats and whims of lootocrats is not an option in the age of public participation.
The three petitions have a shared motif: The ritualistic narratives from the Auditor General on the wastage, and huge variances in receipts and expenditures of public funds. The Auditor has been consistent in reporting massive waste of public money. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption has consistently ignored these exposes. The absence of verifiable indicators of development is a stoic fact: When you spend millions on a public project, the structures need to be visible to the naked eye.
When you claim to be working on a Fifa-class stadium in a small town such as Homa Bay, with a contract awarded in 2014, the beneficiaries have a civil duty to demand to know where it is. A Fifa-class stadium cannot be hidden in a bedroom. The Auditor General reports: “On June 20, 2016, Majano Enterprises Limited was awarded tender for construction of perimeter wall fencing and related works for the county stadium in Homa Bay at a cost of Sh28,228,308.”
The Auditor’s visit to the stadium on January 4, 2018, showed the contractor erected columns covering half of the stadium’s perimeter fence and abandoned the site. This can be verified this morning. This is what this writer said in his letter, which the county criminalised, with predictable threats and the usual malice.
When Sh78 million is reportedly invested in a water project, potential beneficiaries need to know where it is. Residents of Oindo village, West Karachuonyo, where the treatment works were supposed to be, have no idea who is gaining from the ghost waterline. The county response ignored this skeleton in its closet, which was the core of this writer’s column. Water supply is a devolved function. Students of Kanyamfwa Secondary, who were supposed to benefit from the supply, still trek five kilometres to Kobondo Dam to fetch muddy water. The Mirengo reservoir tank, in northward of Karachuonyo constituency, is neglected. This can be verified today.
Public investment in water should produce water for households. Such projects should not exist on paper only; there should be verifiable indicators. Responsible citizens are asking for evidence of these publicly-funded projects. Creative accounting is a joke in the absence of verifiable indicators of development. For the first time, the governor’s office made a public response to these questions. But the response exposes the vacuity of county governance and underrates public intelligence.
Journalists have a duty to expose atrophy in public office. But it is the mandate of the EACC, the DCI and the Directorate of Public Prosecutions and courts to aid accountability. The failure of the EACC and other agencies to investigate and prosecute even cases reported in 2015, is beyond the remit of conscientious journalism. But failure or complicity of investigating agencies, for now, is nothing to celebrate. The 40 days of anarchic plunder will soon end.