Former President Mwai Kibaki owes water firm Sh0.5m in unpaid bills, probe team told

Former President Mwai Kibaki has been mentioned as one of the individuals who owe Othaya Mukurweini Water Services Company (Omwasco), with his bill coming to Sh550,600 as of June 30, 2013.

Nyeri Public Investments Committee (PIC) Thursday grilled the management of the water company on audit queries raised over Sh108,814,615 accumulated debts in the 2013-14 financial year.

PIC chairman Stephen Mwaniki asked the Omwasco officials to provide a list of debtors to the company in order to vouch for accuracy of debts highlighted in the audit report.

Other debtors are Chinga Girls High School, which owes the water company Sh4,461,990, Chinga Boys High School Sh1,710,420, Kiaguthu coffee factory, which owes Sh576,691 and Othaya General Service Unit camp, which owes Sh451,071.

Mwaniki put the officials to task to explain how much time the various debtors had taken to accumulate such high amounts of unpaid water bills to the company.

Omwasco Internal Auditor Peter Ndirangu explained there had been constant changes in the management, which made it difficult to follow up on the debts.

"There was no official handover to the new management and therefore there was no consistent monitoring of the losses incurred by the company," he said.

Mwaniki, however, asked Omwasco officials whether they had attempted to recover the debts and if they had faced any challenges.

But Ndirangu said the company would consolidate its records and confirm how much of the debts had been cleared to date.

"These records are as of June 2013. A lot of time has lapsed since then and we would have to consolidate more recent records to confirm who has paid and who is still in debt to the company," Ndirangu said.

The company was also asked to account for the loss of 64 per cent of its water, which totalled to 3,793,765 million cubic metres of water valued at Sh101 million in 2013.

Acting Managing director Symon Munene explained the water leaked as pipes were destroyed while applying murram and gravelling of roads in Mukurweini and Othaya constituencies.

"Most of our pipelines were destroyed or moved during the murraming of all the roads in Othaya by the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (Kerra) and therefore we lost of water during the period in question," Munene said.