Josiah Moriasi, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Youth Enterprise Development Fund – YEDF was kicked out last week and replaced with Benson Muthendi, the Fund’s Public Relations manager in an acting capacity.
It is reported that five out of nine board members voted to have his contract terminated.
Moriasi, in a phone interview with a local media house, said the board ignored the 2016/17 and the 2017/18 performance evaluation reports, which showed the embattled CEO scored 86 and 89 per cent respectively.
“The board resorted to voting, a move that can be challenged. The influencing of board members to vote in a certain direction is regrettable and unacceptable. This matter should be handled in a proper way. The coming days will be critical for the organisation,” he said.
The meeting to vote our the CEO was held late last month where though the board acknowledged that Mr Moriasi has uplifted YEDF, they had opted to appoint a new one.
Staff fired
In 2018, YEDF fired some seven employees pending investigations on irregular loan disbursements.
The seven, among them two senior managers, were suspended following an internal audit, which established that Sh10,765,000 may have been lost.
The suspension came after YEDF CEO Josiah Moriasi ordered the internal audit department to conduct an assessment of its systems. This was done after a process of migrating the fund’s data to a new system that includes beneficiary loan details revealed some discrepancies.
In one instance, the audit revealed that one official was in charge of several transactions where three youth groups from Makadara, Kajiado North and Bomet East constituencies were receiving loans that had not been approved, acording to audit.
To avoid scrutiny, the suspects ensured that beneficiaries received between Sh150,000 to Sh450,000; a figure which does not require approval from the CEO before disbursement.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) also investigated the matter.
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