The Nairobi Metropolitan Service is now emerging as the official new cashcow in town for vicious state cartels even as the country grapples with the hard-hitting effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
KenyanBusinessFeed is privy to information indicating how state officers in various ministires are lobying to have their proxies handed contracts to undertake projects for the NMS.
The officers are drawn from the Interior, Transport and lands ministries under which respective functions were transferred from the Nairobi County to the NMS that was created by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
This is after Governor Mike Sonko together with Devolution Cabinet Secretary Eugine Wamalwa signed the Deed of Transfer of Functions.
The new development is set to add weight to allegations by Sonko who has accused state officers among them Interior Principal Sectretary Karanja Kibicho for hijacking the deal to advance their own personal interests.
The governor has said that he will soon withdraw from the deal, noting that the state has alreadt renaged the agreement signed by implementing it unprocedurely.
“Clearly, there are few overzealous individuals within the national government who have been overtaken by excitement, and have chosen to break all known laws and the provisions of the Deed of Transfer, to pursue their narrow and myopic interests at the expense of the goodwill and good intentions held by the President and myself for the great people of Nairobi,” Sonko said in a statement.
The NMS boss Major General Mohamed Badi has already held meetings with Cabinet Secretaries in charge of the transferred functions and the ExpressToday further understands that he is under firm instructions to quickly set up structures through which he will utilize the budget allocated to him.
Projects lined up include; massive garbage collection, completion of roads and repair of worn out roads and other unidentified programs in the lands department
The NMS received Sh15 billion in the supplemenatry budget passed by the County Assembly in March and has only two months before the end of the financial year.
It was further allocated Sh 1billion to help in combating the spread of Covid-19 in Nairobi but there has been nothing forthcoming from the agency.Instead, its governor Sonko whose presense has immesnsely been felt on the ground by residents who are in dire need of food.
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