Management of the Kenya Tourism Fund fraudulently made Sh8.5 billion by inflating the cost of the construction of the Ronald Ngala Utalii College, a parliamentary committee heard yesterday.
The Public Investments Committee of the National Assembly was told yesterday that the Kenya Utalii College, coast branch project was transferred to the Tourism Fund and renamed to Ronald Ngala Utalii College, resulting into inflated projects cost of Sh10.4 billion against Sh1.9 billion approved by the Cabinet in 2007.
Contractual obligation Consultants had not fully covered their contractual obligations which involved design, documentations, supervision and contract management. Only the design was partly executed. An audit report tabled before the Adan Keynan-led committee heard that the National Treasury and the State Department of Commerce and Tourism, allocated and released funds to Catering and Tourism Development Levy Trustee and Ronald Ngala Utalii College without considering that the two institutions did not exist in law.
Appearing before the committee were officials of the Kenya Tourism Fund, Joseph Chelope (acting CEO), Margaret Njoka (deputy head of finance), Gerald Omondi (acting procurement officer) and David Mwangi (accountant). Despite the fact that Ronald Ngala College is a major project, the necessary cabinet approval was not attained, instead, the approval accorded to the Utalii College in September 2007, was applied.
“However, the conditions set therein, were overridden leading to inflation of the project by Sh8.5 billion from Sh1.9 billion approved by the cabinet to Sh10.4 billion,” the report read in parts. The project was being carried out as one of the Vision 2030 flagship project. However, audit review of the documented flagship projects revealed that, it did not appear among the planned ones.
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