• Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Sakaja on spot for paying garbage collectors through illegal account

Nov 5, 2022
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Nairobi Govenor Johnson Sakaja who campaigned on a platform of transparency and anti-corruption has started his tenure on a wrong footing at City Hall by paying service providers through an illegal account of the defunct Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) accounts.

The Nairobi Members of County Assembly (MCAs) have exposed Sakaja by questioning him on how he paid monies amounting to almost a billion Kenya shillings through the accounts of the NMS who term of service ended after Sakaja was sworn in as the Governor of Nairobi.

Sakaja is accused of making payments to garbage collectors amounting to 900 million paid through the NMS account.

Two weeks ago, the governor made an initial payment of Ksh303 million and then added Ksh580 million to the garbage collectors.

The MCAs called on the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to investigate the irregularities committed by Sakaja in regard in making the irregular payments to the garbage collectors.

“Sakaja is looting the county’s public coffers using the active NMS accounts through proxy and we want the investigators to raid City Hall and put this to an end. The Nairobi Governor needs to be audited and face the same fate the that bedeviled Mike Sonko who was impeached for corruption and other governors like Kiambu’s Ferdinand Waititu,” they said.

Before he was sworn in, Sakaja made it clear that he will revert all the NMS functions to City Hall as his county government was not going to renew the agency’s deed of transfer after its expiry ended on October 24th, 2022.

Sakaja said all county functions will be reverted to City Hall after he is sworn in.
He said his government will spearhead all the 14 county functions, including the four core functions transferred to NMS under former Governor Mike Sonko’s tenure.
“I want to affirm that from the day we are sworn in, all the 14 functions under the Fourth Schedule shall revert to the county government immediately am sworn in as the Nairobi Governor,” Sakaja said.
The Public Service Commission had earlier said the Mohammed Badi-led entity’s tenure will depend on the incoming county government.


“If the incoming administration is non-desirous of continuing with the contract, then the PSC will be ready and willing to deed back all the services to the county government of Nairobi,” PSC chairman Anthony Muchiri said.


In 2020, Sonko was pressured to surrender essential county functions to the national government, in the form of NMS.
The move was meant to ensure the smooth running of services, ostensibly after Sonko had been barred from accessing his office at City Hall over graft charges.
Through Executive Order No. 3 of 2020, the four core functions included health services, transport, public works, utilities and ancillary services, and county planning and development.
The signing of the deed of transfer left City Hall in control of less influential departments such as ICT, e-government and education and sports.
Also, agriculture and livestock, trade and co-operatives and devolution, environment and finance sectors.
President Uhuru Kenyatta on March 17, 2021, established the NMS and appointed Badi as its director general.

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