Ksh 2B feared lost in ‘illegal’ tourism college construction

Over two billion shillings of tax payers’ money could have been squandered in a project to build a hospitality campus at the Coast. The Ronald Ngala Utalii College located in Kilifi is at the centre of investigation by Parliament’s Public Investments Committee, with the probe pointing to exaggerated costs. Already three billion shillings has been spent, well beyond a 1.9 billion shilling budget with only 37 percent of the work done so far.

The Ronald Ngala Utalii College was never meant to be. In September 2007, the Cabinet then chaired by President Mwai Kibaki elected to construct a campus of the Kenya Utalii College in Kilifi at a cost of 1.9 billion shillings. But when the Tourism Fund Board decided to increase the budget to 8.9 billion, they also renamed the project Ronald Ngala Utalii College, with no legal backing.

The Tourism Fund under the leadership of former Chief Executive Officer Allan Chenane then decided to downscale the project cost to 4.9 billion shillings.

Chenane left office in March last year after he was adversely mentioned in the EACC list of shame.

Fast forward to April 2016, 3.07 billion shillings has already been paid out for the project yet only 37 percent of the work has been done. With the reviewed project set to cost 4.9 billion shillings in total, the amount so far paid would be enough to fund 61 percent of the project. Yet the fund still owes at least half a billion shillings to contractors and creditors.

New Tourism Fund Board Chair Henry Kosgei admitting that things are not adding up.

Earlier, the former CEO Allan Chenane had a rough time explaining why the fund chose to implement a project that had no Cabinet approval.

Cabinet Secretaries Najib Balala of Tourism, Treasury’s Henry Rotich and Phylis Kandie, who previously served in the tourism docket, are persons of interest to the committee, with documents showing that they facilitated implementation of the development at different times.

According to documents tabled by the fund’s board, Treasury was set to finance the project at a cost of 1.23 billion shillings for four years until 2018.