How Uhuruto lured governors to a Sh 38B trap that has come to haunt them

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Governors are now up in arms protesting the Sh38 billion medical equipment lease the counties were forced to sign under the Managed Equipment Services (MES) programme.

The Council of Governors is more worried of the arbitrary increment on the pricing from Sh4.5 billion to Sh9 billion.

Kisumu governor Anyang’ Nyong’o was the first to call for the probe of the project.

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He was supported by Oparanya (Kakamega), Mwangi wa Iria (Murang’a), Wycliffe Wangamati (Bungoma) and Paul Chepkwony (Kericho).

According to Kakamega governor and CoG Chairman Wycliffe Oparanya, governors were lured into a trap by the national government and blackmailed to accept the medical equipment and sign a leasing agreement that they had not read through.

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“Leasing of the contentious medical equipment is directly debited from our budgets, none of the 47 governors know what they signed or where the money goes to,” said Oparanya when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance and Budget.

The CoG lamented that procuring health equipment was strictly the responsibility of the county governments and therefore, the national government did not have any responsibility in the deal.

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“The equipment was brought to Kakamega General Hospital at night on a Saturday. I declined but I was made to accept under duress,” Oparanya added.

In the deal, a fixed sum of Sh90 million was supposed to be deducted annually from each county after it signed a seven-year leasing agreement with the supplier on behalf of the counties.

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However, the deal has been varied and the period increased to 10 years.  In this year’s budget, the counties were allocated Sh9.8 billion while in the 2019-20 they have been allocated Sh6.2 billion.

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The Sh38 billion worth of health equipment is also lying idle in most hospitals countrywide as nurses have not been trained to use them.

“There is an urgent need for the training of nurses on the use of the machines. Most of county hospitals have taken these machines but have kept them in inventories because nurses don’t know how to operate them,”
National Nurses Association chairman Jeremiah Maina said earlier.

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