Mangiti said that the procurement of HIV kits was a requirement for every ministry and therefore his ministry procured five female and five male condom dispensers at costs of Sh12,100 and Sh10,300 respectively.
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 9 – Devolution Principal Secretary Peter Mangiti on Monday clarified that the list of items contained in the ministry’s asset register was presented in the wrong format, leading to inflated figures.
The PS explained that the document was raw and was prepared by the procurement department to act as a guiding draft of the significant number of non-asset expenditure items in the ministry in the 2013/ 2014 financial year.
“The document presented to PAC was a pure human error. It was never pre-meditated to fix anybody,” he said.
“To reverse these errors and avoid recurrence of similar glaring omissions, I have instituted the necessary internal measures to get to the bottom of how they may have occurred.”
Mangiti said that the procurement of HIV kits was a requirement for every ministry and therefore his ministry procured five female and five male condom dispensers at costs of Sh12,100 and Sh10,300 respectively.
According to the asset register submitted to the committee, the ministry was shown to have purchased 18 male and female condom dispensers at a cost of Sh450,000.
“The purpose was for the following: Promote condom use, develop initiatives for addressing behavioural change, train members of staff on HIV/AIDS mainstreaming, initiate counselling and testing programmes and sensitise staff on prevention of HIV/AIDS.”
“We cannot trivialize the efforts the ministry is making to safeguard the lives of the employees and their families especially on matters related to HIV, which is a national disaster,” Mangiti told a news conference Monday in his office.
He also said that the ministry procured 50 dozen biro pens at a cost of Sh290 each and not 20 pens for Sh174,000 as had been indicated in the asset register submitted to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
He also clarified that the piano which had been listed as having been bought for office use and has elicited was apparently procured for the National Youth Service (NYS) band at a cost of Sh235,000.
The ministry says it has prepared the amended list and awaits presentation to the PAC after admitting that the first list contained ‘many errors.’
Mangiti said the Kaspersky Computer Anti-virus which had been listed as having been procured at Sh973,780 was not a single-user package but one with 350 licenses.
The ministry say price for each kit retails at Sh2,500 which included the installation charges.
Devolution CS Anne Waiguru has been summoned to appear at the Ethics and anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) offices for questioning over graft allegations at the ministry.
The Planning PS was last Wednesday grilled by EACC detectives over the loss of Sh791 million at the National Youth Service in October through dubious tenders.
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