Auditor General Nancy Gathungu in a report auditing the Kenya Rural Roads Authority(KURA) uncovered anomalies in the authority’s contracts.
Per the report covering the financial year ending June 2023, Gathungu revealed that KURA owed contractors billions for various projects. The pending bills amount to over Ksh15.7 billion for projects done or completed at different times.
The report presented before Parliament in June revealed that in one of the cases, KURA was yet to pay Ksh2,285,924 to contractors. This payment was part of the payment for 19 projects.
Additionally, in another instance, KURA was to make payments for Ksh9.9 billion worth of projects despite the work being completed. Gathungu added that the authority did not submit supporting documents.
This was part of 36 projects undertaken by KURA which were 100 per cent complete. The total cost of the projects was Ksh68.5 billion but only Ksh58.5 billion had been paid leaving some contractors in limbo.
“Further eight road contracts had been classified as projects terminated and retendered in December 2023. The contracts had a contract cost sum of Ksh18.4 billion.”
“The works certified as of December 2023 totalled Ksh7.3 billion out of which Ksh6.9 billion had been leaving a pending amount payable of Ksh423.9 million. Management has not explained this unsatisfactory situation,” read part of the report.
Additionally, the Auditor General revealed that KURA owed another set of contractors hired to undertake 14 other road projects. The report outlined that as of December 2023, only Ksh1.6 billion had been paid leaving a debt of Ksh1.3 billion.
According to the report, out of the 14 projects mentioned above, contractors were yet to begin any work in six of the projects yet the value of the projects was Ksh6.2 billion. KURA also did not offer a satisfactory explanation of these discrepancies.
The last anomaly discovered by Gathungu was the Ksh1.7 billion owed to contractors who were hired to work on 105 different projects. In this situation, some contractors complained about delayed payments resulting in slow progress in undertaking some of the projects.
Per the report, an audit inspection carried out in February on 19 low-volume seal roads with a contract sum of Ksh32.4 billion revealed that some of the projects were incomplete and in some cases, contractors had abandoned the site while others were progressing slowly due to delayed payments.
Besides pending bills, other issues uncovered in the report included; failure to comply with the basic salary limit and failing to recover staff advances and imprest.
Source: kENYANS.CO.KE
