Heads of departments, Engineers supervising projects cautioned

Garissa,

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

KNA by Jacob Songok

County heads of departments entrusted with implementing government projects together with the supervising engineers and the contractors will be personally held responsible for poor workmanship in completed projects.

Making his key note address when he launched the County Implementation Coordination and Management Committee (CICMC) at his boardroom today, Garissa acting county commissioner Solomon Chesut said that gone are the days when government officials would collude with contractors to carry out shoddy work and get away with it.

The acting county commissioner regretted that some heads of departments, engineers and contractors have taken advantage of insecurity and vastness of the area to carry out shoddy projects.

Chesut said that all government projects have timelines and scope that must be adhered to and should positively impact on the lives of the ordinary citizens.

“Under the newly formed CICMC all heads of departments, SAGAs and MDAs must work together to ensure that government projects and programmes are delivered on time and meet all the project specifications,” Chesut said.

“We cannot use the unique challenges facing our county among them insecurity and its vastness as an excuse to deliver shoddy projects and programmes,” he added.

On his part, Government Delivery Services (GDS) senior director Mahat Shalle said that a number of projects by government contractors in the area are ‘disheartening to say the least’.

Shalle who is also in charge of North Eastern and Eastern projects gave an example of a TVET project in Wajir that was overpaid by over Sh10 million and was incomplete.

“Under the current administration, we shall be asking hard questions that you as the head, the supervising engineers and the contractor must answer,” Shalle said.

“How does one explain a project that has been overpaid and is not complete? A project is 30 percent complete and contractor has been paid 70 percent of his money. Somebody has to answer these questions,” he added.

Shalle who took the members through the guidelines of the coordination and implementation of the national government policies, programmes and projects said that the newly formed CICMC is not out to police government project but rather to monitor and escalate where necessary to the national coordination committee for further action.

The committee members comprise all county directors of government departments and Semi-Autonomous Government Agencies (SAGAs). The county commissioner is the chair and the director in charge of the Government Delivery Services (GDS) formerly Presidential Delivery Services Unit (PDU) in the previous administration is the secretary to the committee.

Courtesy; KNA