EXPOSED: Why Ngilu's Stone Crusher Remains A Dead Venture

 

The crusher at Kwa Kilui

It is now close to two years since outgoing Kaluki Ngilu procured, through her blood relations, a stone crusher at an exorbitant price of KSh85 million. Several months down the line since the crusher was installed at Kwa Kilui village in Kitui Rural, nothing much has come out of it.

And just last week, NEMA stopped all the operations at the crusher until an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is done and all PAPs (persons affected by the project) are duly compensated and resettled.

The installation of the stone crusher at Kwa Kilui has been shrouded in mystery just like all other Ngilu projects in which her main drive is the amount of money she would pocket  from such ventures. A good example here is Kicotec godown that has been in operation for over two years now but nobody, not even the line minister and CO knows where the revenue realized by Kicotec is banked and how it is utilized.

It was the same case for the stone crusher. First, its procurement process reeked of high graft. Where the machinery goes for about Ksh40 million, Ngilu through her blood cartels procured the same at KSh85 million, in which a fat cat of over KSh40 million went to her offshore account.

The installation of the crusher was also as scandalous. The contractor was given free access to county machinery and personnel such as county engineers to install the crusher. Fuel for the machinery would be accessed by the contractor at Kanda petro station and the bills charged to the public kitty. It was a frenzied looting of monumental proportions. The crooked contractor was paid long before the works were completed even after the ramp collapsed due to shoddy work. After the thief was paid, the cartels at Mbee Nzei backdated the certificate of completion! (NB: These details are with the county DCI office, where some of the crooks were summoned and grilled)

But if the Kwa Kilui villagers hoped to benefit from the crusher investment in their locality then they are dead wrong. This is because Ngilu and her cartels have other plans; to use the crusher as their private business whose revenue is carted away to individual bank accounts and where transparency and accountability are alien terms.

First of all, Ngilu and her juakali mbee nzei administration have no formula on how the Kwa Kilui residents would benefit from the investment being in their locality. Not even an idea on Corporate Social Responsbility. Our desk caught up with some top mbee nzei officers at the Trade Department and they confirmed our worst fears.

“What direct benefit do those people expect? The crusher was procured with public funds and as such, all Kitui residents irrespective of their locality deserve a fair share of the crusher revenue. This will come in form of service delivery to the county residents who also include Kwa Kilui dwellers. To simply answer your question, a resident of Kwa Kilui would benefit as much as a resident of Kanziku would benefit from the crusher revenue….” a senior officer at the Trade Department told our Lead Investigator during an interview. This would come as a shocker to Kwa Kilui locals who had even gone ahead and formed cooperatives hoping to benefit big time from the investment.

The locals were also hoping that a good number of them would secure both skilled and unskilled labour at the crusher site but no, this is not forthcoming. The governor and her cartels employed only 3 individuals from the village as casuals but even these took off after it became clear they would go for several months without being paid, as it normally happens at Kicotec concentration camp.

Yatta/ Kwa Vonza Ward residents and indeed Kitui Rural population have nothing to celebrate about Ngilu and her juakali government. And they can’t wait to toss her out! 

 https://www.kahawatungu.com/kitui-governor-charity-ngilu-stone-crusher-theft-ksh19-million/ check out this link how Ngilu and her cartels stole from the public.