The immediate Kericho County Assembly Speaker Dominic Rono and Clerk Martin Epus are alleged to have abused their respective positions of authority to misuse public funds. It has been discovered that the two top officers approved expenditures and payments of Ksh. 651,000 to two hotels; however, a closer scrutiny of the expenditure records revealed that the County Assembly issued a local service order for only Ksh. 366,000 for a two-day conference consisting of 61 members of the County Assembly.
Further, the hotel invoiced and the Assembly paid Ksh. 276,000 being the charges for MCAs for the first day of the conference on 23rd April 2022 and 31 members for the second day on 24th April 2022 at the rate of Ksh. 3000 per member per day. However, the attendance register of the members present revealed that only 38 and 17 members were in attendance on the first day and second day respectively, resulting in an unsupported expenditure of Ksh. 111,000.
In addition, management issued a local service order and paid Ksh. 375,000 for a three-day conference for 50 members of the County Assembly, a review of the attendance register however revealed that 46, 40 and 38 members were in attendance on day one, two and three of the conference respectively, putting into question the accuracy and completeness of the above expenditure.
Further, it has been discovered that management entered into a contract for the construction of the speakers’ official residence at a cost of Ksh. 34,595,580 where the contract commencement date was 2nd August 2019 and the expected completion date was 28th January 2020. The contract completion date was first extended to 11th March 2021 and further revised to 22nd December 2022 without an application for an extension by the contractor and approval by the tender committee.
In addition, the initial performance bond from a local bank provided by the contractor expired on 8th September 2021 and had not been renewed as of 30th June, 2022 The contractor had already been paid Management had paid Ksh. 17,116,291, which is equivalent to 49% of the contract sum.