How the Seven Referral Hospitals Misappropriated Covid19 Funds – Audit Report Shows.

The special audit established that the hospital had only the annual work plan, procurement plan, training plan and budget for its normal hospital operations.

On the contrary, there was no evidence of existence of approved budget, procurement plan and training plan specific to Covid-19 funds utilisation for any of their sources of the Covid-19 funds.

KNH did not have work plans to guide the use of Sh740 million Covid funds.

The funds include Sh490 million for Covid-19 emergency response and Sh140 million for conversion of a day-care centre to a ward for Covid-19 health workers.

“Absence of work plans on utilisation of Covid-19 funds implies inadequate programme planning that may have resulted in inefficient and ineffective utilisation of funds resulting in value-for-money risks,” says the audit.

The audit notes that although KNH was allocated Sh244.66 million for compensation of temporary employees engaged in Covid-19 prevention and mitigation activities, payment vouchers show that Sh263.67 million was spent, resulting in an over expenditure of Sh19.02 million.

Mandera Referral Hospital has been fingered by the auditor-general for Sh228.91 million procurements that lacked professional opinions, contrary to the law.

The audit established that procurements of Sh272.53 million were undertaken through Requests for Quotations (RFQs) and did not meet the threshold set under the regulations.

The audit notes that these procurements should have been done through open tender since the amounts involved were above the RFQ threshold.