A petition has been filed in Parliament to probe a payment of Ksh.18.5 billion as payment for power that was never supplied to Kenyans in 2021.
The petitioner wants four former State officials in the Uhuru Kenyatta administration held responsible for the payment to the Lake Turkana Wind Power project.
The suspicious payment which was flagged by the Auditor General is said to have been penalties for not having power lines to transmit the power from the Turkana windmill firm.
Rights activists led by Peter Agoro filed the petition in the National Assembly and copied the Executive office of the President.
The petition faults the payments made in tranches to the private power generating company by KPLC to allegedly settle penalties.
In the petition, the Auditor General Nancy Gathungu had in her report flagged the contract between KPLC, the Ministry of Energy and Lake Turkana wind mill and the payment of Ksh.18.5 billion without supply of electricity.
The petitioner has told Parliament that MPs should probe whether in the first place the wind power was ready to supply electricity by the time payment was demanded.
A special audit report tabled in Parliament on August 5, 2021 noted that the Ministry of Energy and KPLC be held responsible for the Ksh.18.5 billion bill arising from the Lake Turkana wind project whose electricity was never channelled to power lines nor used in Kenyan homesteads but taxpayers money was cashed out to their bank accounts.
According to the petition, a last payment made to the Lake Turkana wind power firm of Ksh.1 billion in Germany ended in private bank accounts. The money then returned to the Central Bank of Kenya in what was suspected to be money laundering.
The Auditor General ordered further investigations to be carried out to determine any acts of anomaly on individuals involved in the entire process of the project and action taken on those found culpable.
The petition before Parliament now wants the Auditor General’s report be implemented.
The petitioners want the committee of Parliament to summon former Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua, former Attorney General Prof. Githu Muigai, Ms. Vivian Yeda who was in the KPLC board and the East African Development Bank.
The then chair of CBK Mohammed Nyaoga as well as committee members in the agreement will be required to appear before MPs.
Out of the Ksh.18.5 billion penalty accrued from the delayed evacuation of ready power from Loiyangalani due to the 21 months delay in completion of transmission lines to Suswa, the Ministry of Energy paid Ksh.10 billion, the audit report noted that the balance of Ksh.9 billion was to be passed on to consumers by KPLC until the year 2024, which according to the petitioner has pushed up the cost consumer prices.
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