This archive report was first published on 12 July 2019.
Lucy Kariuki, the Nakuru County Roads and Infrastructure Executive, faced a grilling session before an ad-hoc committee on July 11, 2019, to defend herself against accusations of abuse of office and gross misconduct.
Ms. Kariuki, who has been battling an impeachment motion for the past three months, appeared before the committee formed by the assembly to probe her over the allegations.
She denied the charges, claiming the petition adopted by the assembly was malicious and lacked merit. The executive is alleged to have failed to implement various development programmes, including the Boresha Barabara initiative, a new project by Governor Lee Kinyanjui aimed at improving the state of feeder roads across all 55 wards.
Ms. Kariuki denied causing the delay of the implementation of the plan, which started in January 2018 but stalled in April 2018. She claimed that after the launch in January 2018, the project proceeded well, and a new framework and tentative budget were agreed upon in a meeting with the Roads Committee chairperson, Majority Leader, and Budget Committee chairperson on February 7, 2019.
She stated that the projects in Kureoi and Molo were temporarily withdrawn due to rains, and machinery could not be made available in some wards. The executive said that in March, 87.8 kilometers of road had been graded and 9.1 kilometers gravelled in 17 wards using the available resources.
The committee informed her that Nakuru Town was in darkness since she had failed to utilize money allocated for street lighting. Between financial year 2017/2018 and 2018/2019, the county government had allocated Sh122, 685, 160 for street lighting.
