Dandora Stadium renovations set to resume

The Dandora Stadium contractor will within two weeks resume work on the project that has stalled for close to a year now, the Nairobi County Government has said.

This is after President Uhuru Kenyatta last week called on City Hall to ensure the construction of the stadium is complete, even as a probe into the project continues.

Nairobi Education and Sports CEC Janet Ouko said the county government has already began engaging the contractor with a view to having him back on site in the next two weeks.

“The county government has been consulting on the matter and we have tried to engage with the contractor so that he can go back on site and finalise the remaining works. The consultations are still ongoing and within two weeks, all stakeholders should have reached an agreement,” said Ms Ouko.

“The remaining part is not a big component and when I came back as CEC in January, I wrote to the County Attorney to seek for direction because the position is that even if there is ongoing investigations, the Dandora community needs to enjoy the services of the stadium. I am sure that within two weeks we will have an amicable solution,” she said.

The contract for the Sh350 million stadium was awarded to M/s Scanjet Construction Limited in the financial year 2017/2018 and was given 18 months to complete the project.

However, at 80 percent of work, the construction was stopped after the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) opened investigations into the tendering process and irregular payment of Sh196 million for the project.

The contractor left the site in September 2019 delaying the last piece of work that was remaining with the stadium set to be launched last year July.

Already, more than 3,000 seats had been installed in the terraces with changing rooms and floodlights fitted.

However, trouble began when concern was raised over the change of materials by the contractor who was accused of using steel instead of concrete.

An investigation by the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) flagged irregularities in the awarding of the tender, alteration of contract specifications, suspected irregular payments and forgery of documents while also questioning the standard of the work.

The authority had on June 13, 2019, received a complaint that Scanjet Construction was using steel structures in clear contravention of the contract specifications with allegations that contract documents, including cabinet memorandum, were forged to state the stadium should be steel structure when the work is 70 per cent complete.

After investigations, PPRA indicted the county government for paying Sh196.87 million to the contractor despite the technical evaluators questioning the quality of work. It recommended remedial action against any party culpable.

“We have noted with a lot of concern that the contractor breached the terms of the contract presenting a legal challenge to the county government as he ought to have adhered to the terms of the contract. We now want to be guided by EACC and PPRA as we look for advice on how to deal with the works he did that were illegal,” said Ms Ouko.