Corrupt Ex-Ketraco Boss Fernandes Barasa Is Not Out Of The Woods Yet

The former Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) boss Fernandes Barasa has been summoned by the National Assembly Energy Committee over the Lake Turkana Wind Power contract.

The Public Investment Committee (PIC) say they will require Barasa’s presence to explain how he awarded the contract of the construction of the LTWP without being directly involved in the procurement.

This is after the acting Chief Executive Officer Anthony Wamukota failed to explain who authorized the award of the contract to a Spanish firm Isolux Corsan that ended up delaying the construction of the project forcing Ketraco to terminate the deal.

“There is a letter that has come up that the former Ketraco boss, Fernandes Barasa had indicated that there is the need to renegotiate the deal that generated energy. So, we need to ask the former Energy CS Charles Keter whether he was aware of the former Ketraco CEO, “Nassir, Abdullswamad Sheriff said.

Kenyans paid a Sh5.7 billion fine after Isolux Corsan failed to build the Loiyangalani-Suswa power transmission line to evacuate power from the Lake Turkana Wind Power.

The contract was handed over to a consortium of Chinese firms – Nari Group Corporation and Power China Guizhou Engineering Company.

Isolux was to build the line by August 2018 but Ketraco terminated the contract after the Spanish firm went into receivership.

The project was later completed in mid-2017 for Sh28 billion, but the line went live in September 2018.

Wamukota was yesterday pressed by members of the National Assembly Energy Committee to explain why the agency had failed to pay some of its bills in time leading to fines and penalties that have substantially increased its obligations.

“Some of these plots of lands that you were compensating don’t match, there are some people without names in the wayleave list but they have been listed as pending bills, some names appear up to 15 times, how do we substantiate this,” Embakasi South Member of parliament Julius Mawathe posed.

While defending himself the CEO said in the supplementary budget they were only looking to clear bills for work done and were not in any way going to pay those on the wayleave list.

Prior to appearing before the Gladwel Cheruiyot-chaired committee, the Auditor General’s special audit on Ketraco projects had raised red flags on major anomalies in procurement of the companies that undertook its power projects.

The committee also wanted to know why among all the firms contracted by Ketraco three of them had accumulated a total of Sh15 billion in pending bills from the total of Sh16.06 billion reported by the Controller of Budget on July 31, 2021.