World Bank stops funding Kakamega climate change plan
By Douglas Dindi, December 6, 2024
The World Bank has stopped funding climate change-resilient actions in Kakamega after the county government was implicated in the misappropriation of millions of shillings meant for community-led climate-resilient projects.
Available evidence reveals that the county first reneged on its 2023/24 budget commitment to kit the Financing Locally Led Climate Action (FLLoCA) account at Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) with Sh109 million but raided the fund with pay-outs amounting to Sh60 million when a cash transfer of Sh292 million from the World Bank was reflected on the account.
The People Daily can authoritatively report that the Sh60 million was irregularly paid out to among others Waypoint Suppliers Kenya Limited (Sh16, 728,346), Tonniesanto Investments (Sh13,578,703), Pan Pacific Kenya Limited (Sh22,344,552) and Actra Africa (Sh2.5m) for work not procured under the FLLoCA programme.
Waypoint and Tonniesanto allegedly supplied solar installation materials for rehabilitation works on the Savona Water Supply project. Pan Pacific allegedly supplied electric fencing material for the Kakamega Forest reserve. Although the projects have connection with climate change, they are seldom in the County Climate Actions Plan (CCAP) and did not pass through the Participatory Climate Resilient Assessment (PCRA) a key requirement for any FLLoCA project.
In October, the National Treasury acting on concerns from the World Bank directed the CBK to freeze all transactions on the Kakamega FLLoCA account. The National Treasury also raised a demand notice to the Kakamega government to refund the Sh60 million it had misappropriated from the account.
County comment
Reached for comment, Kakamega governor Fernandes Barasa played down the standoff, responding a brief text message: “That is not the true position…. the issue was the county to deposit counterpart funds of Sh60 million which we agreed with National Treasury to do so in three instalments.”
Last month, Barasa transferred the chief officer in charge of environment David Kulova Musafiri who was the County Climate Change Steering Committee (CCCSC) Secretary to Malava as a town manager, raising eyebrows among stakeholders in the climate change field.