Kenya Power offices on Aga Khan Walk in Nairobi.
Parliament has directed Kenya Power Company to recover Sh274 million that it paid to a consultant who supervised the last-mile connectivity project.
The National Assembly’s Public Investment Committee on Commercial and Energy Affairs demanded that the electricity distributor provide a detailed list of all consultants it hired to supervise the project and proof of their engagement.
The committee chaired by Pokot South MP David Pkosing on Thursday July 10, 2025 directed Kenya Power Managing Director Joseph Siror to furnish the team with site visit logs or inspection reports for it to resolve a query raised by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu.
The Pokot South MP dismissed the possibility that all consultants were absent arguing that it cannot be that they were all unavailable.
“We are talking about Sh274 million paid to people who may not have done the work,” Mr Pkosing said.
“I am not convinced that they can all be away. I direct that you recover the funds if investigations confirm the consultants – hired in November 2017, were not on-site.”
The committee met with Dr Siror during the scrutiny of Kenya Power books of accounts for financial year 2021/22 to 2022/23.
Ms Gathungu had in her report said there was no evidence the unnamed consultant delivered the assignment to warrant the payment.
Missing documentation
In a report for the year to June 30, 2021, Ms Gathungu said site visits by auditors revealed no evidence of the consultant’s presence at the sites.
“There was no evidence of the consultant’s personnel’s presence at those sites, raising doubt on whether they had been deployed as per the contract,” Ms Gathungu said in her report.
The report revealed missing documentation, including attendance records and minutes to verify the consultants’ participation.
In his responses, Dr Siror defended the payments, arguing that supervision of the last-mile project was milestone-based rather than continuous.
He said the milestone-based payments meant that the consultants were only required to verify completed phases of the project.
‘’The consultant supervises multiple sites per lot which cuts across several counties,” Dr Siror said.
“The audit team was assigned to the KPLC engineers for the period of the audit whereas the consultant was engaged in supervising ongoing sites at the same time.”
Dr Siror said Kenya Power hired one consultancy firm who was to deploy the monitors.
He said all inspections were done by the joint team and no job was paid for without the team.
The auditors who appeared before the committee rejected Dr Siror’s arguing that physical verification shows the milestone lacked proper documentation.
A representative of Ms Gathungu told the committee that to require Dr Siror to provide minutes to help the auditors get the details.
