Forget Sabuni Ya 35k, A Parastatal Spends 1.95m To Buy Wallets @6,500/=

While it is a norm corporate and other organizations to award gifts to employees, the Communications Authority of Kenya took this to a new level. The telecommunications and broadcasting regulator decided to buy its staff wallets each costing Ksh. 6,500.

The agency bought 300 wallets for its 189 staff members bringing the total amount spent to 1.95 million. As if the choice of gift is not absurd or strange to say the list, the agency spent way more than even the priciest outlets in town for the wallets.

A wallet for men at Woolworth goes for 3,500 for men and 4,000/- for women. At the cheapest store at Gift center it goes for 1,200 for both men and women meaning the agency would have saved more than 1.5 million.

There is also no accounting for the extra 100 wallets. Given that many Kenyans use wallets that cost less than 1,000, this extravagance ranks in similar brackets like the 109k wheelbarrow and curtains costing millions of shillings. More recent cased of overpricing by government agencies has been the 35,000/- soap for El-Nino preparedness.

It is really a comedy of errors as custodians of public funds compete to outdo each other in corruption.

Source: Business Daily