A majority of those affected are infrastructural projects in public schools where tuition blocks, dormitories, dining halls, toilets, and administration blocks were being constructed.
However, NG-CDF Board chief executive officer Yusuf Mbuno has assured the affected institutions that projects will be revived.
“The board will conduct a fresh tendering process for all the stalled projects to ensure they are completed as scheduled to save the learners from the agony of studying under trees or congested classrooms,” said Mr Mbuno.
He said that some of the contractors cited the Covid-19 pandemic as the reason behind their inability to complete the projects.
He further revealed that some of the contractors who won the tenders, a majority being youth, had hardly achieved 3 per cent of what they had promised to deliver, forcing the board to recommend immediate termination of the projects.
Mr Mbuno said that the contractors had clearly demonstrated that they lack the capacity to successfully implement the projects, leaving the board with no option but to terminate the contracts to protect taxpayers’ money.
“Despite giving the contractors several chances to improve on their performance, they still could not seize the opportunity and complete the work,” Mr Mbuno said.
Mr Mbuno revealed that a team from the board’s evaluation and monitoring section could not even trace some of the contractors on the ground and that their efforts to reach them on phone to explain the challenges they were facing were futile.
Mr Mbuno was on a three-day tour of the North Rift region to assess school projects funded through the kitty. At Lower Kipkaren Primary School in Turbo sub-county, Uasin Gishu County, Mr Mbuno was shocked to learn that the management of the secondary school section had converted a dormitory into a classroom for Form Four students.
This was after a contractor who was awarded the tender to put up three classrooms abandoned the site three years ago and efforts to reach him to return and complete work had been unsuccessful.
Area MP Janet Sitienei said the contractor only dug the foundation of the classrooms and left the site, never to be seen again.
She wondered how the contractor could disappear from the site without permission from the public works officer, terming his action a violation of the contract.
“The contractor who was given the job was just a young man whom we had trusted to complete the project within one year as he had promised, but unfortunately, he has let us down,” said Ms Sitienei.
