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A Senate watchdog committee has fingered Bomet Governor Hillary (pictured) Barchok for stalled projects worth more than Sh1 billion and for inflating pending bills by more than Sh204 million.

Senate County Public Accounts Committee chaired by Homa Bay Senator Moses Kajwang’ also questioned the county chief over irregular engagement of casual employees to the tune of Sh53 million without payment schedules and vouchers to support the expenditure.

Auditor General Nancy Gathungu’s report for the Financial Year ended June 2021, shows that the county government had declared its pending bills as Sh842.39 million, however, it could support outstanding bills worth only Sh637.43 million, resulting in unreconciled and unexplained variances of Sh204.95 million.

Committee further put on the spot Barchok over stalled projects worth more than Sh1 billion with Sh532 million being for Chebang’ang water supply project and Sh257.4 million Bomet Stadium.

Joint venture

Chebang’ang project was a joint venture between the county government and Kenya Red Cross Society signed in 2018 for a period of five years.

However, even after the county spending Sh96 million in the project, physical inspection of the water supply project conducted in November 2021 revealed that the project was yet to be completed and works which had been started at the intake of the water supply had stalled as the contractor had abandoned the site.

Governor struggled to even point how much his administration had pumped into the project as the records were shambolic but told the committee that Sh96 million had been spent after minutes of searching.

“You cannot appear lost in your own documents. It is not the work of this committee to help you go through your own documents. We seem to be more famil-iar with the documents than their owners,” said Kajwang’.

He went: “Sh500 million is a lot of money and we need a deeper audit to know how much has been pumped into the project to know if the law has been followed.”

However, Governor Barchok governor blamed false claims and manufactured documents to be behind the overstated figure, saying they are currently verifying the claims.