Row over Sh100m govt offices deal

Interior and National Co-ordination Cabinet Secretary Joseph ole Lenku at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport Sunday after returning from Burundi. [Photo: Collins Kweyu/Standard]

By Geoffrey Mosoku

Nairobi, Kenya: Fresh questions have arisen over the abrupt relocation of Government ministries and departments from Jogoo House ‘A’ in the Nairobi city centre.

Cabinet Secretary Francis Kimemia wrote to the affected departments and ministries on July 3, ordering them to vacate the offices to give way for the Inspector General of Police, David Kimaiyo. Their operations and services will be severely disrupted during the move, reliable sources told The Standard.

Some of the ministries will rent offices in a privately owned building at a cost of over Sh100 million a year. The deal appears to have been sealed through single sourcing using a loophole in The Public Procurement and Disposal Act.

Article 73(2) of the Act allows for restricted, non-open tendering of services where “the time and cost required to examine and evaluate a large number of tenders would be disproportionate to the value of the goods, works or services to be procured” and “there is only a few known suppliers of the goods, works or services as may be prescribed in the regulations.”

The Government mainly uses prequalified contractors for security contracts, but it is not clear how the owner of the building was prequalified or for that matter, if any such process was followed.

Private property

LSK chairman Eric Mutua said the law provides that the Government advertises for a tender to provide office space and the law has to be followed.

“We know the public sector is grappling with office space but one cannot lease private property without an advertisement.” Mutua said.

However, Interior and Coordination of National Government Principal Secretary Mutea Iringo said the Ministry of Housing had advertised for office space sometimes back and Manga building in Nairobi West fitted the description they wanted.

“The building satisfied specifications in terms of available space, parking and location. You can get more details from Housing ministry,” he said.

Sunday, International Centre for Policy and Conflict (ICPC) executive director Ndung’u Wainaina accused Kimemia of causing unnecessary expenditure by ordering the workers out. “The problem with this Government is that there is no order as an individual is allowed to exercise executive power that he does not enjoy. An individual cannot wake up one morning and order civil servants out of a Government building. Kimemia is not the head of civil service and he cannot be allowed to peddle powers that he does not enjoy,” Wainaina said.

Querying the move, he added: “If the Government is crying about a huge public wage bill, how can the same Government use millions in leasing private buildings?”

Wainaina said that even if the Jubilee Cabinet had resolved to allocate the space to Kimaiyo, there could have been a process of accommodating the civil servants in an orderly way, and asked why the reduction of ministries to 18 from 44 did not eliminate the problem of space.

Government Spokesman Mr Muthui Kariuki said the Information Department Business Processing officers and the Konza Technopolis Secretariat will occupy three floors of privately owned Manga House in Nairobi West area of the city.

The Government will pay the owner, said to be a close to the Jubilee Government, at least Sh88.9 million a year, excluding Value Added Tax (VAT) for the lease, but there is the added cost of renovating the offices and furnishing them.

VAT is calculated at 16 per cent, which means the final lease cost alone would be Sh103.13 million shillings annually. This brings the total monthly rent per square feet to Sh8.6 million.

In addition, the departments will foot the cost of parking, which comes to Sh1.39 million per month, inclusive of VAT. It comes at a time when the Government is fighting to cut expenses to meet salary demands by public servants.

Last Tuesday, Lands, Housing and Urban Development Ministry Principal Secretary Mariamu El Maawy wrote back to Kimemia explaining how the workers will be housed.

In his letter, Kimemia said: “The Ministry (Lands, Housing and Urban Development) advocates for open layout design for all Government offices to enhance economic use of available space and to reduce the cost of renovations.”

The Children’s Department, which currently occupies part of the Jogoo House ‘A’ ground floor, will move to Kenya Railways Pension Headquarters while employees of the Ministry of Devolution and Planning, are to move to Extelcoms House.

Sunday, Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph ole Lenku addressed journalists at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport where he explained why Jogoo House “A” was being vacated.

He said apart from Kimaiyo, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) would also be moving to Jogoo House.

He did not elaborate if the NIS and CID will also be vacating their offices at Nyati House in the city centre and Mazingira along Kiambu Road.

Third floor

“We started with Jogoo House because the Inspector General of Police has to be in the same building with his deputies, which was not the case before,” Kimemia said.

It was reported one month ago that Deputy President William Ruto had requested that Mr Kimaiyo be moved to create space at the former Shell/BP House.

Kimaiyo moved there when former Prime Minister Raila Odinga was still in office, and occupied the third floor, one above the former PM’s office, after reportedly declining to move to Vigilance House, saying his was an independent office.

He claimed moving to Vigilance House, which has a network of communication equipment, could have been misconstrued to mean that he was taking sides with the regular police unit. The Department of Information (KNA) at Jogoo House have equipment’s costing millions of shillings that were installed at the Jogoo House, but have to be moved.

The Children’s Department, according to sources who asked not to be quoted as they are not authorised to speak to the media is not comfortable with the changes as this will affect their services of disbursing billions of shillings in their possession to the Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) programme.

Donors directly fund the department. “We have about Sh7 billion that has to be disbursed using the IFMIS system that we used Sh25 million to install, and any dislocation at this moment means that the donor funds won’t be spent and we have to return them,” a senior officer from the Ministry of Labour said.

Interestingly, Kimemia told journalists Sunday that they want to reduce the number of rented buildings following the collapse of some ministries and departments.

“Government wants to reduce the number of hired buildings, especially after some functions were moved from the national government,” he said without explaining why some staff were being relocated to Manga House.

The use of Sh100 million to rent space for workers is raising eyebrows at a time when the State is battling to contain a high wage bill in the public sector.