The Senate has been told how trustees of Kiambu Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) used part of the land to obtain a bank loan for a non-existent development project.
During a sitting of a Senate committee at the institution, details emerged that in 2012 the trustees took Sh100 million loan and a further Sh58 million in 2014 using the institute's title deed as collateral.
The institute’s Board of Trustees and Board of Governors (BOG) have not been seeing eye-to-eye over the management of the institute’s assets, including land, which they have been tussling over.
Those whose names were read out to the committee as members of the Board of Trustees were Allan Ngugi, Kimani Mathu, Peterson Kamaara, JN Thairu, Rev Timothy Ranji, Jean Njeri Muhoho, AM Muhia and Prof Gituro Wainaina.
More names
READ MORE
Surveyor blames military for failing to do due diligence on disputed land
Pakistan shuts primary schools in Lahore over record pollution
Others are Catherine Ngugi, George Waruhiu, James Njenga, Prof Eddah Gachukia and Joan Waithaka.
The Senate Committee on Education on Tuesday held a sitting at the institute on a fact-finding mission over the land dispute.
This was after Nominated Senator Isaac Mwaura took petitioned the Senate Committee to investigate the matter that has put the institution on the verge of losing out on a Sh2.2 billion expansion project being funded by the German government due to a protracted land dispute.
BOG chairman Josiah Kariu told the committee no development project was funded using the loan money, adding that the trustees also refused to pay back the money, forcing the institute to pay to secure the land from being auctioned.
It emerged that the institute has been paying the loan to the tune of Sh10.9 million per term from school fees collected.
Details also revealed how the trustees had leased out the coffee plantation, rented out staff houses and a carpentry workshop to outsiders.
The chairman of the county assembly's Committee on Lands and Panning Hezron Gachui told the Senate team that during their probe, they found out the trustees had leased the carpentry workshop at Sh3.7 million and coffee farm at Sh1.3 million per year.
Rented out
"We found out that the trustees were also renting out the staff houses to outsiders at the current market rate, with a three-bedroom house going for Sh32,000 and two bedroom Sh25,000, thus making Sh662,522 from the 51 houses," he said.
KIST might miss out on the Sh2.2 billion expansion project.
For the institution to benefit from the project, the title deed must be in its name.
On June 21, the German Development Cooperation wrote a letter to the Kenyan government agreeing to extend the deadline to September 1 to give them time to solve the KIST land issue.
Mr Gachui told the senators the trustees were collecting Sh14.7 million annually.
