Wastage by the Leadership of Kenya

We promulgated the new constitution. We gave birth to devolution. We celebrated, we sang and danced. We did not know by then that devolution was corruption. Now corruption is everywhere. This is an account of the wastage by the leadership we elected. See how Kenyan money has been spent.

In Vihiga County, the County Government spent 20 million shillings to construct madhouses for the poor across the County in a project that was launched early this year. The governor launched some of them and now it is a laughing stock. 20 million shillings for madhouses.

Bungoma Governor Ken Lusaka came in the eye of storm following revelations that his government had purchased ten wheelbarrows at a cost of more than Sh1 million. That’s 109, 000 shillings for each wheelbarrow. Under normal circumstances, an ordinary wheelbarrow costs 2, 000 shillings and 4,000 shillings when it is reinforced. More saddening is that the governor defended the purchase saying the wheelbarrows were special.

The Nairobi County Government spent 50 million shillings on buying and planting grass in the CBD ahead of US President Barack Obamas’ visit in July. This was all over in the media. People made fun of it and all was over. Public funds were gone, gone without a trace.

Kirinyaga County Government was alleged to have spent a total of 1.2 million shillings paying a person who opened county’s official Facebook page. Opening a Facebook page is free but apparently in this County, they do not believe in free things.

In the year 2014, some of the MCAs in the Kiambu County Government went to Israel. This was termed an official trip. The MCAs were even more concerned about the friends who did not go that they fetched “holy water” for them. This trip was funded by public funds. We also made fun of it, and soon we forgot about it.

In Tharaka Nithi County, Members of the County Assembly went to Egypt just relax their mind after a tiring year. After working so hard to serve those who elected them, they saw it prudent to go and enjoy. The trip is said to have cost five million shillings.

In Kisumu County, on July 2014, the county assembly members demanded a three-day induction course on how to use their newly acquired iPads that had been bought at 60,000 shillings each and they were 50 of them. The same County Assembly approved the purchase of Sh72 million Prados.

In Nyamira County, the office of the governor paid 33 MCAs and the speaker Sh10, 000 each for lunch as they discussed the Finance Bill, a total of 330 thousand shillings.

This cannot be complete without bringing in the ministry of Devolution. Devolution ministry, apart from the NYS saga where close to a billion shillings were lost, spent 450,000 shillings on 18 custom-made condom dispensers and a 1.7 million shillings spent for a TV screen in the office of

CS Anne Waiguru and an extra 12 million shillings for an office partition in the 2013/2014 financial year. There was also the purchase of a copier machine at 1.5 million, a free downloadable Adobe software at 1.9 million shillings and another shocking detail is that 250,000 for ten flash discs.

Let’s break this issue of the flash disks down. A 32GB flash disk costs 2000 shillings at the current market price, ten such flash discs would cost 20,000 shillings but the ministry spent 250,000 shillings. The ministry also spent 174,000 shillings on 20 ball point pens. Now, at the current market price, a pen costs 25 shillings, 20 pens would cost 500 shillings but our esteemed ministry spent 174,000 shillings on them.

The ministry spent 260,000 on two IPAD tablets. Because they are used to expensive things, let’s say a good tablet now costs 100,000 shillings, two would cost 200,000 shillings. 45,000 shillings was spent on a DVD player when a good DVD can be purchased at 15,000 shillings. 242, 000 shillings were spent on 100 4GB flash disks when currently, a 4GB flash disk costs 1000 shillings, and a hundred of them would cost 100,000 shillings. One piano was purchased at a cost of 235,900 shillings, 973,780 shillings was spent on a Kaspersky security kit where currently, a three user Kaspersky costs between 1000 and 2000 direct from the supplier. A laptop was purchased at a cost of 206,000 and two visitors’ chairs at 56,950 shillings each. Business cards were made at a cost of 1.5 million shillings and one hundred keyboards and adaptors costing four million shillings.

That is the wastage of the leadership we elected.