Kambi: Mega projects approved via e-mail

By ALLY JAMAH

Labour Cabinet Secretary Kazungu Kambi has admitted that the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) Board  has been approving projects worth billions of shillings through email exchanges without the board of directors meeting physically.

He tabled at least five mega projects approved in 2013  including Sh3.85 billion for the sale of executive apartments at Milimani in Nairobi,  and Sh3.6 billion for the Nyayo Embakasi Estate in Nairobi.

Other projects given the green light through email were NSSF Voluntary Staff Requirement Scheme worth billions of shillings, but exact figures were not specified.

In addition, the Sh5 billion project to construct infrastructure such as roads and sewages was also approved through email exchanges.

This took MPs aback, since they had imagined the email approvals were only restricted to the Tassia project, with some protesting the arrangement as out of order  and a loophole for misuse of public funds.

Kambi said that according to the current regulations governing the meetings of the board, such email arrangements were allowed since the board had powers to formulate how it conducts its business.

“Maybe we should have a review of the board rules to ensure that when big projects are being approved, it has to be done through a physical meeting of the board members,” he told House Labour and Social Welfare committee.   But MP Gladys Wanga said the benefits of technology such as email should not be denied  to NSSF and other public institutions so long as due diligence was done to avoid losing public funds that taxpayers’ contribute to.

FULL INFORMATION

Email approvals have proven to be controversial after one of the NSSF board members, Jacqueline Mugo, who  represents the Federation of Kenya Employers said she was not furnished with full information when she agreed to approve the project by email.

She claimed to have received the email without attachments, containing changes in the project.

In addition, Kambi disowned a crucial letter related to the controversial Sh5 billion Tassia projects in which the NSSF allegedly gave conditions for the sale of the land to the squatters who had invaded that land.  The letter is signed by Naftali Mogere, NSSF’s former managing trustee.

He was  responding to queries by members of the Parliamentary Committee on Labour, Kambi said that a letter  tabled by some of the owners of the Tassia plots allegedly from NSSF  purporting to deal with the squatters, who were organised as self-help groups was not genuine.

He termed the letter, written in 2005,  as fake since it was not in the NSSF files and that the there was no document giving authority for such letter to be given.

He insisted that NSSF has never dealt with the squatters as groups but was only dealing with individual plot owners.

FAKE LETTER

Mogere has been summoned by the committee to confirm if he wrote the letter that was tabled before the committee by the self-help groups representing the squatters who have since bought the Tassia plots.

Yesterday, NSSF leaders were put to task and they admitted to “difficult conditions” from the then City Council of Nairobi, which did not want to approve the subdivision of the land into plots before infrastructure services were approved.

Some of the MPs said that construction of infrastructure such as service roads was the responsibility of  county governments, and not that of plot owners or the NSSF.

They said that NSSF was being entangled  in responsibilities that did not belong to the fund.