Drought in Kenya: Yet another dam scandal as Kenya Red Cross blame stalled project to contractor

Kenya Red Cross recently found itself at cross roads when Kenyans took to social media scolding the humanitarian organization.

Days after the organization appealed for support from Kenyans to help salvage the ongoing drought situation, Kenyans used the hash tag ‘TumechokaRedCross’ on twitter, to fault the initiative.

It is barely a week and and yet a new stalled dam scandal has emerged tying the humanitarian organizations’ throat.

A report by Citizen TV on Sunday indicated that 117 million dam project in Chesirimion Baringo County, has remained stalled for over seven years.

Money not enough

The project, which was initiated by Red Cross in 2012, was a pilot project budgeted from Sh 1 billion the organization collected from Kenyans for Kenya initiative.

But here is what the humanitarian organization had to say about the project…

Red Cross Director of Operations Ayaz Manji said the organization had three pilot projects including Kaikor in Turkana North, Moyale and Chesirimion. 

Mr. Manji said the Sh 117 million allocated for Chesirimion project was not enough to complete its construction as some of the materials were very expensive, including the metallic pipeline.

The organization also blamed the contractor for the dam that is yet to be completed since 2012.

“We had two issues for the initiative, first the humanitarian emergencies, where we used Sh 350 million to assist about 3.5 million people who were starving at that time,” said Manji.

“We had school feeding programs and then agreed with the secretariat(which is independent of the Kenya Red Cross) to use the remaining Sh 350 million for pilot projects that can show how drought can be dealt with in long term plans.” He added.

Another Sh 120 million was was given to another pilot project in Moyale Sub County.

The DOP said Chesirimion project in Baringo is still useful to hundreds of cattles and people leaving their, “even as we speak now, people and their animals are still using that dam.”

This comes barely a month after the Kimwarer and Arror dam project was discovered stalled in Elgeyo Marakwet, prompting questions to Sh 21 billions the treasury released for the project.

The Directorate of Criminal Investigation is compiling investigations into the matter.