Senate committee summons Badi afresh to explain use of Covid-19 funds

A senate committee has summoned the Nairobi Metropolitan Services Director General Mohamed Badi afresh after he failed to show up to explain the expenditure of Covid-19 funds.

The Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) boss skipped a session by the Senate Health Committee on Thursday where he was expected to explain the questionable spending.

Mr Badi instead sent his deputy Kang’ethe Thuku and Director for Health Services Dr Ouma Oluga, among other top officials, to represent him in the virtual meeting. However, the officials were turned away.

The DG will now appear before the committee at a yet to be announced date, together with Nairobi acting Governor Ann Kananu.

“In our considered view, we had invited the NMS Director General in his capacity as the chief executive of the entity, because the issues we should discuss can only be responded [to] by the DG. In his absence, we have to reschedule this meeting,” ruled the committee’s chairperson and Trans Nzoia Senator Michael Mbito.

He said the committee will write a letter to Mr Badi informing him when he should appear alongside Ms Kananu and her executives to respond to what he termed as “cross-cutting issues” involving NMS and City Hall.

“The next meeting we will also have the deputy governor Ann Kananu and her county executives to also respond on issues that concern their domain, the functions that were not transferred to NMS,” he said.

Virtual meeting

The virtual meeting comes after a report by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu on the utilisation of Covid-19 funds by counties fingered NMS for some irregularities involving Sh294.38 million received from the national government in June 2020.

Some of the irregularities involved failure to utilise a Sh64 million makeshift isolation centre, irregular cash withdrawal of Sh32 million from KCB account for facilitation of health workers and Sh120 million payment to frontline healthcare workers without a budget.

“The management could not explain the basis of the facilitation; the authority to pay facilitation and expenditure could not be supported,” read the report in part.

The auditor could also not establish the whereabouts of some Sh182.07 million donated by the Danish International Development Agency and the county’s own contribution to the war against Covid-19.

“However, we could not establish where these funds were received and whether they were transferred to the respective health centres. This is because the county management did not provide relevant documents,” the auditor’s report adds.

Tender

On the Sh64.93 million tender for design and maintenance of the makeshift isolation centre awarded to the University of Nairobi Enterprise Services (UNES), the report indicted NMS for single sourcing as well as failure to issue UNES with a tender document contrary to section 104 (a) of the Public Procurement Disposal Act, 2015, which implies that the firms might have never signed the contract.

“The expenditure was direct procurement of consultancy for architectural, conceptualisation design, innovation and maintenance of Covid-19 isolation centre. The firm was contracted on June 26, 2020, and already been paid Sh33.15 million as of July 30, 2020,” said the report. [email protected]