Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja’s pet project ‘Dishi na County’ has been allocated Sh2.8 billion by the county government in the last two years.
In 2023/24 financial year it was allocated Sh1.7 billion and got Sh400 million in the supplementary budget for the 2024/25 financial year.
However, Auditor General Nancy Gathungu has queried the use of funds in the programme that is run in collaboration with Food4Education, headed by Wawira Njiru.
In the audit for the year ended June 2024, Gathungu questioned the criteria that was used to pick the organisation to run the school feeding programme yet it had only been picked for a pilot exercise.
“The County Executive engaged Food for Education for a pilot exercise. However, no agreement or memorandum of understanding was signed between the County Executive and the company,” says the Aditor General's report.
“Therefore, the audit could not establish how the company was engaged to provide the services.”
Food4Education is donor-funded and it establishes kitchens in primary schools, which it uses to prepare balanced diet meals.
It uses tap-to-eat technology, where children wear wrist bands that are tapped anytime they take a meal to deduct payment.
The money to pay for the food is loaded on the band via mobile money.
In Nairobi, children are required to pay Sh5 for every plate of food they consume while the county pays the remaining Sh25.
Gathungu, however, notes that the county should pay Sh20 per plate as part of the contract cost.
The contract between Nairobi and the organisation was signed on December 5, 2023, and was to run for a year with every plate consumed by a child going for Sh25.
The report says a review of invoices and payments made indicated that Food4Education invoiced a total of Sh345,961,676 at a rate of Sh25 per plate and was paid Sh262,262,167 during the financial year under review.
Gathungu says the implementor of the project earned Sh5 more than the agreed amount in the contract.
A further audit revealed that in September 2023, the Embassy of France pledged financial to the Njiru-led organization for delivering the meals for 25,000 of the most vulnerable children in public primary and ECDE schools in Nairobi County.
The pledged support was approximately Sh145.7 million, which was wired directly to Food4Education but the audit could not ascertain the accountability for these funds.
“In addition, there were no established measures by the County Executive regarding the management of donations received, as there were no guidelines in place for handling such donations.”
Gathungu further questioned the irregular procurement for the construction of the central kitchen worth Sh32 million. She says that only two bidders submitted bids to undertake the construction, both were classified as responsive and evaluated based on the set technical criteria, which they both met.
“Despite this, the tender evaluation report stated that the first bidder was non-responsive and eliminated at the preliminary stage, contradicting the individual committee member scores.”
The county also paid Sh8 million to a contractor for the construction of a Central Kitchen at Njiru Primary School.
The Sh33 million contract had three bidders but none of the evaluators signed their individual score sheets with Gathungu saying it raised doubts about the authenticity of the scores.
Gathungu's team's physical verification of Central Kitchen in Toi Primary School in October 2024, revealed several issues.
“Visible cracks were observed on the wall, despite the kitchen being completed only a year earlier.”
Gathungu says that the kitchen had no electricity meter installed, and water connectivity was not installed by the contractor; instead, Food4Education connected the water at their own cost.
“There was also poor workmanship of the pavements and the installed gas pipe was not connected to the cooking vessels, rendering it unusable.”
The contractor was expected to install three water tanks, each with a capacity of 5,000 litres for cold water storage at a total cost of Sh300,000.
“However, the contractor failed to install driveway and parking lights, which were valued at Sh500,000 as specified in the bill of quantities.”
A review of the Central Kitchen at Mutuini Primary School showed that it was constructed by the organization and handed over to Nairobi County for use by the Dishi na County programme.
At the time of the audit, the kitchen’s construction was complete and operational and was feeding 12 Primary Schools and five Secondary Schools.
“The audit team was informed that the high school students were paying Sh30 per plate for their meals, which exceeded the program’s intended scope and was therefore deemed irregular.”
Gathungu said that she could not confirm the value for money for the expenditure used in the programme.
