The government flouted tender rules by single sourcing a company that was tasked with the job of handling the Galana Kulalu Irrigation Project, it has emerged.
According to the Auditor-General Edward Ouko, the state favoured Green Arava in the tendering, before deploying it to construct the 10,000-acre project in August 2014.
In an audit report presented to the National Assembly on Thursday, Ouko added that the company was also paid beforehand, and not after the harvest as should be the case.
Consequently, he found out that the Sh15 billion advance payment is to blame cases of poor yield in the Tana River County Project, due to the underperformance of the company.
“Single sourcing favoured the contractor against competitive bidding, pricing, capacity and competence,” reads the reports according to the People Daily.
He also says that poor contract agreements are the other issue after the government allowed itself to accept to leave all the financing agreements to the contractor.
“This gives the contractor an upper hand and leaves the employer (Government) at the mercy of the contractor," further reads the report.
This comes months after Arava abandoned the project over delayed payments from the National Irrigation Board (NIB) which is the implementing authority.
Despite numerous promises to resume work since it downed its tools in February, work at the site remains at a halt with the company yet to honour its promise.
The wrangles have been confirmed by Agriculture Cabinet Secretary, who says that the government is considering terminating the contract with the Israeli firm.
His meeting with the company bosses which was scheduled on Tuesday flopped after the officials failed to show up.
The CS has, however, insisted that the government remains committed to reviving the project as it seeks to ensure food security.
“There has been a disagreement between NIB and the contractor over various issues. As a ministry, we have been consulting with NIB and other stakeholders with a view to solving the dispute and ensure the Government aspirations of producing more food are achieved," he said.
"Recently we formed a committee of various government agencies to look into the challenges facing the project,” he told the paper.
The new revelation comes only a fortnight after Ouko revealed huge amounts of fake pending bills in counties, some amounting to billions of shillings.