How Chinese Company Spent Sh1.3B To Maintain 5 SGR Engineers

Tender documents now show that the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) spent a whooping Sh1.3 billion for the maintenance of five Kenya Railways engineers supervising the construction of the Standard Gauge Railway.

The money was used to award the five engineers unexplainable allowances, mobile phones and airtime. They also received Sh544 million budgeted for Housing and offices for the engineers and Sh385 million for overtime and supervision costs.

Sh72 million was budgeted for the payment of “attendant staff” of the engineers, possibly in salaries or allowances. some Sh42.9 million was allegedly spent on “payment of overtime to the engineer’s junior staff” while another Sh30 million was apparently paid to engineers as superintendence costs and a further Sh30 million covered miscellaneous expenses. A further Sh7.6 million was set aside to pay for temporary accommodation.

The engineers also enjoyed Sh5 million mobile phone costs, including some 20 mobile phones that cost Sh50,000 each, a fixed telephone line to their homes on site connected at Sh120,000 and Sh3.6 million in airtime.

Residences for the engineers were constructed from a budget of nearly Sh200 million, with the senior-most temporary officials’ homes built at Sh3 million. Monthly maintenance costs for the accommodation of the engineers’ home was budgeted at Sh12,274.

A total of Sh48 million was budgeted for maintenance of the KRC staff accommodation.

The tender documents have been provided by rights activist Okiya Omtatah in his petition to have the two tenders awarded for the construction of the line and the other for supply of rolling stock declared irregular by the Court of Appeal.

Omtatah also wants the judges to rule that the huge loans taken to fund the SGR be recovered from the individuals who negotiated the loans and not from the Exchequer.

It is in the petition that the activist has cited various incidents where he believes the taxpayers are paying for costs that were overly inflated in the bill of quantities (BQs) used by CRBC during the tendering process.