Kirinyaga County has denied purchasing one executive chair at Sh648,000 for its governor Anne Waiguru, holding that staff members blundered when feeding the public procurement portal with contract details.
The county’s chief officer, economic planning, budgeting and procurement Carilus Otieno said in a statement that the contract awarded to Shiloki Enterprise Ltd was for the supply of two executive chairs and repair of hydraulic systems on another four chairs.
Kirinyaga County had declared on the Public Procurement Information Portal that on July 31, 2023 it awarded Shiloki Enterprise Ltd a contract for the supply of an executive chair for Ms Waiguru’s office.
The contract start date is listed as October 26, 2023, and the closing date is listed as January 18, 2024.
But in his statement on Monday, Mr Otieno insisted that some of his staff slept on the job by feeding the portal with wrong information.
Mr Otieno’s staff have since amended the information on the Public Procurement Information Portal to indicate that Shiloki Enterprises supplied two executive chairs and repaired another four.
“We would like to clarify and confirm that there was an error in entering the procurement details in the Public Procurement Information Portal (PPIP). The correct details should have read as follows… Supply and delivery of two (2No.) executive chairs and repair of hydraulic system for four (4No.) chairs. However, it was mistakenly indicated as; Supply and delivery for Governor office chair,” Mr Otieno says in the statement.
“We acknowledge this laxity by staff entrusted with the responsibility of updating the portal. We have taken immediate measures to rectify the information on the PPIP portal,” Mr Otieno adds.
The statement was issued in response to a Nation investigative story which detailed several instances of wastage by national and county governments, where institutions spent extravagantly on seemingly luxurious products and services in the 2023/24 financial year.
The story stemmed from a data trove in which more than 200 instances where public institutions spent extravagantly on non-essential products and services. For instance, State House purchased a digital watch at Sh750,000 and branded umbrellas for Sh3 million.
Homa Bay county spent Sh522,000 in August 2023 to hire a chase car for governor Gladys Wanga, while the Kenya Ports Authority paid Sh4.9 million on carpets for its managing director’s and Board chairperson’s offices. The Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Services and the State Department of Planning jointly spent over Sh1 million on three smart TVs.
Experts who spoke to the Nation attributed the extravagant spending to the capture of Kenya’s procurement systems by private companies, and public officers who are willing to enable bizarre spending sprees.
