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CORD MPs have challenged Jubilee administration to clarify scorecard figures published in the State of the Nation Address by President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto.
The leaders questioned Kenya’s cost of investments in infrastructure as some of the highest on the continent and warned that tax payers were not getting value for their money due to inflated costs of the standard gauge railway and road projects.
MPs particularly questioned figures of electricity connection to primary schools which the Jubilee scorecard put at 95 per cent.
Bungoma Senator Moses Wetangula challenged the Government to publish names of schools connected to the national grid. “Such statements are fraudulent and aimed at hoodwinking Kenyans,” he said. “In Bungoma County only 30 per cent of schools are connected to electricity yet it has better terrain than most parts of northern Kenya and parts of Rift Valley. We demand a report and audit on which primary schools have been connected.”
Public Accounts committee Chairman of the National Assembly Nicholas Gumbo said the figures being read to the public are different from the reality on the ground. “Even in my Rarieda Constituency the reality is that only 49 per cent of schools have been connected,” he said.
Gumbo, an electrical engineer, disputed the 5,000MW figure the Government says it is generating, arguing that it took Kenya 50 years to generate 1,500MW and it would be impractical to claim electricity generation has grown 300 per cent in three years. “We have some of the most inferior and defective transformers ever in the history of Kenya. Jubilee should not confuse electricity poles and stalled transformers for functional ones.” Gumbo said.