It's bad enough that they hatched a brilliant 100M scheme, but then they went ahead with said foolish plan to renovate a new house, sending out tenders to 10 unnamed firms? Does public outrage mean nothing to the powers that be? Apparently it does. According to this article, Works on Ruto House Delayed, officials saw fit to trim the ludicrous budget even further. “According to a top Public Works official, the government contemplated shelving the repairs after the Sunday Nation broke the story last month but later decided to scale down the budget to about Sh75 million.” Wow! A whopping 25M saved thanks to the quick thinking of our officials. But wait, “According to the DP’s office, ministry officials had initially proposed Sh272 million for repairs that entailed converting some rooms in the house into offices to cut down on government expenditure of renting private buildings for visitors.” From 272M to 75M? This government is nothing if not fiscally prudent, no? No.
“According to tender documents, the sitting room, main lounge and bedrooms will now have wooden floors while the reception area leading to Mr Ruto’s office will be carpeted. The flush doors will also be removed and replaced with mahogany doors.” Very important, those wood floors, and mahogany doors, God forbid our DP be subjected to the indignity of cold floors and whatnot. I mean really, what kind of country doesn’t have mahogany doors in its VIP residences? But wait, that's not all, “A report by the Government Protective Security Office, which is in charge of security of government buildings, stated that the residence’s entrance lacked stop barriers and recommended their erection plus the installation of speed bumps and bollards. “The three gates to the residence lacked protective barriers for a VIP. The perimeter fence is too low to effectively prevent access into the compound and the electric wire fence is not functional,” reads part of the report. The report further indicated that there was no telephone operator to filter calls or a CCTV surveillance system in the compound and building.” No call filtering? How now? What was the 383M we paid to the previous contractor before for then? “In a recent TV interview, Mr Ruto rejected the huge repair bill because the previous contractors had been paid over Sh400 million. He also revealed that about Sh45 million was recovered from a contractor who had not finished the job.” Well then, I guess it's all good, if we recovered some money from the previous bugger. Or not, I can't find any mention of said refund anywhere, and given that we are a country obsessed with anything even remotely scandalous... Watch the interview and join those dots for yourself.
These buggers are several kinds of special, six kinds to be precise.
