Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) spent a total of Sh162 million to procure two 'dysfunctional' generators at JKIA, it has emerged.
This was revealed Wednesday during a meeting between the National Assembly’s Committee on Transport who were on a fact-finding mission tour of the JKIA and top officials from KAA.
Acting managing director Henry Ogoye who found himself on the receiving end during the session, had a rough time explaining about the power outage at the facility last Friday.
The outage paralysed key operations for close to two hours.
Ogoye, the former head of corporate planning, absolved himself from any blame saying the contract for the supply of the generators procured three years ago had been terminated.
Out of the total contract sum, Ogoye disclosed that KAA had paid Sh110 million to the contractor before its termination.
"We had a challenge with the performance of that contract. We had paid Sh110 million and the remaining amount was for commissioning," Ogoye said.
The contract was issued in 2020 and it involved the supply, installation, and commissioning of two standby generators and their associated automatic changeover switches, fuel storage, reticulation and maintenance.
Ogoye replaced Alex Gitari whose contract, Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen, terminated following his visit to the facility a day after the power outage.
During the meeting, Principal Secretary Mohammed Dagar informed the MPs that engineers to commission the generators were already on site.
Committee chairperson George Kariuki expressed displeasure over the current standards at the Airport.
"Your standards are not currently unsatisfactory. We need leaders who are conversant with the status of this airport as the hub for this region and who will maintain international standards," said Kariuki.
Having been dissatisfied with the responses, the Committee gave the PS a one-week ultimatum to avail a written submission in regards to the measures put in place to manage KAA.
Murkomen had last week vowed to ensure that a similar incident is not replicated.
"It has been decided that the two generators that were procured more than two years ago be commissioned," he said.
The MPs also inspected the power supply Station and Terminals 1A, B, C and the Cargo Terminal.
