Peter Kenneth, the Gatanga MP (seen here at a campaign rally in the past) is eying the presidency in the next elections/
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 7 – Gatanga is still ranked top in the best use of Constituency Development Funds (CDF) in a report that revealed Sh363 million had been misappropriated in 34 constituencies.
The Citizen’s Report Card by the National Taxpayers Association (NTA) singled out the Gatanga water project which was undertaken with transparency.
NTA National Coordinator Davis Adieno said the project gave residents value for their money.
“When our engineer assessed this particular project, he found it to be value for taxpayers’ money because the implementation of it was excellent and when he was going round in measuring the water pressure in the taps, he found it to be okay. There was transparency in the manner the process was done,” he explained.
Other constituencies which performed well were Wundanyi, Kajiado Central and Kajiado South.
The report card revealed that the worst performing constituency was Marakwet East which used only half of the Sh31 million allocated to it and was followed by Malava, Kibwezi, Naivasha and Kitui Central.
“The budget awarded (to Marakwet East) was about Sh31 million. Out of this, the budget that was well used on well built, complete and incomplete projects was about Sh15.1 million,” Adieno said.
He further observed that Sh89.9 million of CDF was still lying in the bank accounts of various constituencies and urged the committees to utilise the funds.
“In our opinion, this is a lot of money to be laying around in any bank account of a constituency and we are urging Members of Parliament to move quickly to use these funds,” he said.
Adieno said that about Sh363 million was found to have either been misused in ghost projects or diverted to other uses in corrupt ways.
The study found that in Bungoma, Mbita and Muranga, 50 percent of Local Authority Transfer Funds was not utilised properly.
“In Bungoma, Mbita and Muranga, the total budget that was awarded for those three local authorities was coming to about Sh64 million and the budget that was badly used, wasted and unaccounted for (was) about Sh32 million,” he said.
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