Kenya spent millions of shillings purchasing bullet-proof vests that cannot protect wearers from bullets or knife stabs

According to Auditor-General Edward Ouko, millions of taxpayers money went down the drain after the Kenya Prisons department spent Sh43 million to procure default bullet-proof jackets for it wardens.
The bullet-proof vests were delivered without the ballistic plates and cannot protect wearers from bullets leave alone even protect one against a knife stab.
The Prison department was also conned millions in CCTV surveillance equipments.

Kenya spent millions of shillings purchasing bullet-proof vests that cannot protect wearers from bullets leave alone even protect one against a knife stab.

According to Auditor-General Edward Ouko, millions of taxpayers money went down the drain after the Kenya Prisons department spent Sh43 million to procure default bullet-proof jackets for it wardens.

Mr Ouko pointed out in his audit report that the 600 body armour jackets were delivered without the ballistic plates that offer protection against bullets, rendering them useless and worthless.

“An audit inspection later revealed that the body armour does not have ballistic panels and cannot be used to protect staff against rifle fire, ammunition, knife stab and sharp or pointed instrument,” Mr Ouko says in a qualified audit opinion on the financial statements of the Prisons Department for the year to June 2017.

Records at the prison department showed that 300 bullet-proof jackets were procured at a cost of Sh22,275,000 and another 300 at a price of Sh20,998,000.

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The goods were delivered and received by the stores and later distributed to various prisons stations without being inspected for strength.

Apart from the ‘worthless bullet-proof vests’ the department could also not account for Sh8.6 million it paid a contractor to supply and install 190 closed circuit television cameras (CCTVs) at Naivasha maximum security prison.

Jamax Logistics Enterprises who were awarded the Sh43,184,480 on January 10, 2017, to supply, delivery, installation, testing and commissioning of IP-based CCTV Surveillance System at Naivasha Prison only supplied 158 cameras, resulting in a loss of 32-five Megapixel Cameras worth Sh1,728,000.

“The audit further established that 52 cameras costing Sh4,576,000 installed at the reception and hospital block is defective, and therefore, not functioning... Further, the audit revealed that the contractor supplied eight Power Distribution Boards instead of 30, resulting in a loss of 22 contracted units costing Sh550,000,” the audit says.

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Apart from the contractor not offering the required training to the prison staff on the use of CCTV services, the audit also found out that the CCTV cameras delivered had low storage space resulting in fluctuations in the required CCTV services.

The contractor was required to supply and install 64 Channel 400 Mbps Network Video Recorder (NVR) with minimum 48TB 12 hot-swap HDDs Internal Video Storage (RAID 6).

However, five 3.63 TB totalling 18.15 TB and 5 hot-swap HDDs were installed instead of 48 TB and 12 hot-swap HDDs required, resulting in a loss of Sh1,791,000.