In an event targeted to entertain Nairobians and tourists on December 31st 2016, City Hall spent a colossal Sh 6.3 million on fireworks only.
The Assembly’s Public Account Committee (PAC) raised concern over the expenditure in the opinion that the money would have been of benefit to various county projects.
It has also emerged that the county government contravened the Public Procurement and Disposal Act, 2015 by applying a restricted tender process in order to favor the company which supplied the fireworks products.
The Auditor General in his 2016-2017 Financial Year report has questioned why the county government applied restricted tender instead of an open tender in procuring the fireworks.
The report further states that payment vouchers lacked contract documents, which renders the propriety of the expenditure suspicious because it could not be confirmed.
Appearing before the committee last week , the county’s Chief Officer for Cooperatives and tourism, Machira Gichohi, said that the fireworks were used at the Kenyattta International Convention Centre (KICC) on new year’s in 2016 in an event organized by the county government to usher in the new year.
The much serious committee was disturbed why so much money was spent at an event whereby fireworks are up and over within 10 minutes and not even a quarter of city dwellers were at KICC,
Trying to lighten moods of the PAC members and creating satirical amusement Machira said that plans were on progress to hold a much bigger fireworks event this year.
“There will more fireworks this year to light up the entire city as a way of improving on our domestic and foreign tourism.
We will light up the city to put it on a higher pedestal compared to other cities of the world like Sydney, Melbourne and even New York”, Machira said.
He further said such celebrations can make Nairobi be headlines in media platform such as CNN and as a result attract more tourists.
However Nominated MCA June Ndegwa interjected and said Nairobi residents would need more development and effective service delivery than attraction of tourists through increased fireworks events at the end of 2019.
“What Nairobians need is a clean environment, street lights and running water in their taps. This will make them happy and not a Sh 6.3 million . We need to get the garbage out before we attract these tourists,” Ndegwa said.
Machira found himself off guard and unable to answer multitude of questions asked by the committee who were seeking to get an explanation about the flawed procurement process and the seeming inflated spending on the fireworks.
At some point, PAC’s chairman Wilfred Odalo had to intervene and protect Machira from the members who were shooting questions from all dimensions seeking answers to the anomalies.
While going through the audit , Kilimani MCA Moses Ogeto revealed that even prior to the procurement process being initiated, the department had already floated two companies with specific quantities in miligrams of the fireworks that were to be used.
He further pointed out that the tender committee meeting was held on December 22, 2016 four days after a Local Purchase Order (LPO) had already been given out to the preferred company , M/s Tononoka Limited.
“ The meeting was held on December 22, 2016 during Christmas holiday, the local purchase order was done on 18th December and the payment was done on 16th December. This does not add up ,” Ogeto said.
The committee resolved to the summon all the officers who sat on the county tender committee to shed more light to the queries.
They include Luke Gatimu, George Wambua, Ann Kiaruri, Winnie Matimu, Dr. Samuel Ochola, Dr. Solomon Obielo, Patrick Mwangangi, John Obuk and Nyaduda Ambeka.