Road contractors are increasingly abandoning projects or going slow in works due to deep budget cuts and delayed disbursement of funds by the Treasury, the Auditor-General has revealed.
By the end of May 2024, the Treasury had only released Sh35 billion of the Sh88 billion budgeted for roads in June last year, just as the government slashed funding for hundreds of roads.
Among the projects hit by the funding cuts are Mombasa-Mariakani Highway, Nairobi Outering, Nairobi Eastern Interchanges (Landhies-Jogoo Road Corridor), dualling of Argwings Kodhek Road and the Ruiru–Githunguri-Uplands.
The Treasury, in the second supplementary budget for 2023/24 fiscal year, slashed Sh9.8 billion from some 88 road projects, extending an impasse that has been witnessed since 2022, where a majority of roads have stalled due to funding shortfalls.
“An audit inspection exercise carried out in February, 2024 on 19 low-volume seal roads with a total contract sum of Sh31,426,015,932, revealed that for most of the projects, the contractors had abandoned the site due to delayed payments while the contractors who were on site were on a slow progress also due to delayed payments,” the audit report shows.
Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu, in the report on the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (Kerra), notes that the Ministry of Transport finds itself operating in a dire situation, with contractors of ongoing and completed projects owed more than Sh51 billion, even as the State fails to release money on schedule.
The audit notes that six projects valued Sh6.2 billion under the low-volume seal roads in urban centres, which would have started by October 2022, are yet to break ground due to lack of funds.
The Ministry of Roads owed more than Sh51 billion to contractors of 182 road projects by end of June last year, the Auditor-General reveals.
“A total of 105 contracts were classified as ongoing projects with a contract sum of Sh193,456,648,951. Out of this, a total number of 32 projects with a total contract sum of Sh69,226,156,071 or 36 percent had slow progress due to delayed payments,” Ms Gathungu notes.
The audit reveals that Kerra owed contractors of ongoing road projects Sh38 billion by end of June 2023, while, with Sh11.7 billion of the road projects classified as slow “due to delayed payments.”
“In addition, 19 contracts with a total contract sum of Sh29 billion with contract dates beginning between March, 2021 and March, 2022 and which were classified as contracts under contract mobilising. The certified payments totalled Sh4,449,802,340 and payments made as at December, 2023 amounted to Sh2,163,865,716 thus leaving an amount of Sh2,285,936,624 as unpaid,” the audit notes.
The audit highlighted issues affecting roads classified as low-volume seal, which are undertaken in different parts of the country by Kerra.
In the second supplementary budget of the 2023/24 fiscal year, the Treasury slashed Sh9.8 billion funding to 88 road projects, with at least two-thirds of the funding for critical roads removed. Nine projects relating to murramming of rural roads had 68 percent (Sh3.2 billion) of their budgeted funding slashed in the budget revision, with funding for some roads completely removed.
The budget revision also saw Sh2.4 billion slashed from the original allocation of Sh2.56 billion to Mombasa-Mariakani Highway Project, a 93 percent budget cut.
Nairobi Outering Roads project also lost Sh20 million out of the original allocation of Sh50 million, while the entire allocations of Sh32.5 million to Nairobi Eastern Interchanges (Landhies - Jogoo Road Corridor) project and Sh11.5 million for the dualling of Argwings Kodhek Road, were removed.
The supplementary budget also removed the entire Sh3 billion allocation to Annuity Low Volume Seal Roads, most of whose projects are affected the Treasury delays, and witnessing contractors abandon projects.
The Treasury slashed Sh3.9 billion out of the Sh6 billion allocation to the Horn of Africa Gateway Development Project and Sh50 million from the Ruiru–Githunguri-Uplands (C560) project.
