1.3 Billion Shillings Missing from the Housing Department

The State Department for Housing cannot account for at least 1.3 billion shillings allocated to it for the financial year ending June 2018.

The report by the Auditor General, Edward Ouko, seems to have unmasked yet another massive looting of public funds by government officials.

According to the Auditor General, the officials at the department could not explain the variance of 690 and 783 million shillings respectively in the trial balance for both current and development accounts.

121 million shillings were missing from the State Department’s deposit account while 627 million shillings out of the 10 billion shillings allocated was disclosed under cash at hand.

The looting at the State Department of Housing might be more than 9 billion shillings given that they were allocated more than 10 billion shillings in 2018.

The Auditor General found out that there was a total of 9.9 billion shillings under “cash transit” that was unsupported by any documentation. Scarier, the 9.9 billion shillings were also omitted from the financial statements.

The department could also not account for a total of 307 million shillings for the cash and cash equivalents. There was also a variance of 511 million shillings transferred to the Civil Servants Housing Scheme.

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The Housing Department is also said to have collected 156 million shillings in rent, a huge drop from 250 million shillings but indicated NIL in the trial balances.

The department has a total of 1.3 billion shillings in pending bills that were not settled by June 2017, further disclosing the deep rot that reflects across most state agencies.

As the looting in the Housing Department continues, the government insists that Kenyans must be deducted the 1.5 percent every month for the housing levy as a “donation towards the affordable housing program.”

President Uhuru Kenyatta plans to construct at least 500,000 “affordable houses for Kenyans” before the end of his second term in 2022.

What is more evident is that the money, if deducted, will be looted and Kenyans have every reason to refuse or ask how the money will be accounted for.