The Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu has flagged the Ann Kananu-led administration over suspicious payments for solid waste management contracts worth over Sh248 million.
According to a report for the financial year ended June 30, 2020, City Hall could not provide procurement records of the contracts making it hard to ascertain reasons for the variations.
Gathungu said examination of the records indicated that contracts for the same tasks in the same geographical zones were awarded to various firms at different payment rates.
“Records on procurement of the contracts were not provided for audit and as a result, the reasons for the variances could not be confirmed,” said Gathungu.
“In view of the apparent lack of objectivity in pricing the contracts, value for money may not have been obtained on the expenditure totaling Sh248,893,590 spent on collection and transportation of solid waste.”
In July 2019, Nairobi County Assembly Public Accounts Committee (PAC) revealed that officials at City Hall’s environment department could not account for over Sh160 million paid to garbage collectors during the financial year ended June 30, 2018.
The report questioned the county government for irregularly paying Sh162 million to 11 companies contracted to collect garbage at the county but could not submit payment vouchers made to the companies, the list of the firms and their contractual documents to support the payment.
The report also revealed that a backhoe belonging to Creative Consolidated Systems, on April 16, 2017, operated for 29 hours a day collecting garbage in Nairobi’s CBD.
The same equipment was also found to have operated non-stop for 23 hours daily for a whole month as per odometer reading analysis and for this, the company was paid Sh10.3 million vide Cheque Nos 16032 and 16031.
Further, a garbage vehicle on July 18, 2016, was weighed twice within four minutes between 0108 hours and 0112 hours having delivered garbage weighing 11.75 tonnes and 13.65 tonnes, respectively, from the CBD to Dandora dumpsite.
City Hall lost millions between August 2018 and April 2019 due to lack of a weighbridge at the Dandora dumpsite.
This is after the weighbridge installed at the dumpsite in 2010 had not been operational since August 2019 and the county was not able to measure waste deposited by contractors for payment.
It emerged that during the period, the county had been relying on an estimation method to determine how much waste is deposited at the 32-acre yard and how much to pay.
