Nandi Governor Cleophas Lagat grilled over alleged misuse of county funds

Nandi Governor Cleophas Lagat has today morning appeared before Senate Legal Affairs Committee, to answer to audit queries, raised by the auditor general about county spending.

Lagat was grilled over alleged dubious hiring of graders for 7 million shillings, tree planting for 5 million shillings, and illegally paying some MCAs 10 million shillings, among other queries.

The Senate Legal Affairs and Human Rights committee, which was chaired by Nominated Senator Fatuma Dullo, demanded answers from the Governor over the alleged flawed distribution of bursary funds and Procurement irregularities by his administration.

Lagat had initially rejected summons by the Committee, saying the matters were already being probed by EACC and that civil societies that took the petition to Senate, were illegally registered.

However the Committee said any member of public or civil society organization, whether registered or not, had a right to petition the Senate and raise questions on projects funded by county government, and that since the matter was not before any court of law, discussing it in the committee would not amount to sub judicial.

Governor Lagat had a hard time explaining why the county government allegedly awarded tenders for the construction of roads across the county in an irregular manner, without following procedures stipulated in the Public Procurement and Disposal Act.

The County Government allegedly made payments amounting to Ksh 7,765,359 to various companies for the hire of graders without tender documents and tender evaluation minutes being provided.

The procurement process was also not carried out competitively in accordance with Section 29(1) of the Public Procurement and Disposal Act, 2005.

Governor Lagat admitted that there might have been some flaws in the procurement process for the construction of roads since the tendering process was done hastily in order to beat time.

The Senate Committee also queried the Ksh 8,134,476 bursary payments which the County Government promised to provide evidence of the procedure and criteria used to identify the needy students.

The actual allocation for the bursary funds was Ksh 7,200,000 but the county government disbursed an excess of Ksh 934,476 without being supported by any authority.

The County boss said the supporting documents, for the queries before the committee, existed but said due to their bulkiness he was not able to present them before the committee.

He however tried to convince the committee but was asked to avoid giving tale information but furnish the committee with the required documents.