Africa-Press – Kenya. Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) has been cleared of allegations of misappropriating Covid-19 funds. NMS Director-General Mohamed Bad submitted responses to the accusations that satisfied Auditor General Ms Nancy Gathungu’s questions.
Office of the Auditor General (OAG) Head of Data Science, Addy Waichigo, stated that NMS provided the valuation of the makeshift isolation centre and handover certificates.
Regarding the money, Waichigo stated the first withdrawal was irregular but NMS provided bank transactions and statements to clear themselves. He also mentioned that it was a transfer from one account to another.
Badi admitted to receiving Ksh294 million from the national government as well as Ksh100.2 million as allowances for health care workers. However, he refuted receiving money from City Hall or from Danish International Development Agency (Danida).
Badi elaborated that as of July 31, 2020, NMS had only spent Ksh91 million and not Ksh97.3 million as indicated in the report.
He stated that for the Ksh120 million, NMS did not have an Integrated Personnel Payroll database (IPPD) system therefore not able to pay the allowances. Addressing the Ksh32 million cash withdrawal, the General clarified it was a cash transfer from their bank account to those of health workers.
“The amount transferred was Ksh26 million and Ksh32 million. The Ksh6 million difference was a double-counting error in the audit report,” commented Badi.
Officials from the administration had been summoned by the Senate Health committee to shed light on a number of irregularities on utilisation of Ksh294.38 million from govt in June 2020.
Some of these irregularities were failure to utilise a Ksh64 million makeshift isolation centre, irregular cash withdrawal of Ksh32 million from a local bank and Ksh120 million payment to medics.
She also questioned the Ksh182.07 million donated by Danida. “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 special audit could not establish whether the funds donated were received and utilised at the NMS or the county government since neither of the two entities availed relevant documents,” stated in the report.
NMS was also questioned on spending Ksh64.93 million on tender for design and maintenance of the makeshift isolation centre to University of Nairobi Enterprise Services through single sourcing.
