Plot to drop Sicily Kariuki as Health CS – Weekly Citizen

A fresh push to edge out Health cabinet secretary Sicily Kariuki has been hatched by some members of the Kenyatta family who have been doing business with the ministry and parastatals under it.
At the heart of the war are multi-billion shillings contracts to supply drugs and other medical equipment in major hospitals across the country.
Those behind the scheme to have Sicily sacked include Uhuru’s cousin, Kathleen Kihanya and sister Nyokabi Muthama.
They are directors of Sundales International Limited, a company that has allegedly been irregularly allocated multibillion shillings tenders at Kenya Medical Suplies Agency.
Kihanya, a woman described as indomitable and whose passion for money is unquenchable is said to bitter with Kariuki for her refusal to give Sundales International Limited contracts worth millions of shillings at the Health ministry to add on those she is engaged at Kemsa.
Kihanya who was recently appointed by Trade and Industrialisation cabinet secretary Peter Munya as board member of Kenya Export Promotion and Branding Agency, is also the head of Aces Ahead, a public relations and marketing consultancy firm she has been fronting to get media relations job at the ministry and parastatals.
Insiders add that Kihanya is pushing for the appointment of Kemsa chief executive officer Jonah Mwangi as Health cabinet secretary to replace Kariuki.
Mwangi is the only medical doctor to ever serve in the role of CEO in Kemsa.
Insiders add that part of the scheme is to taint the character of Kariuki so that the president can have a second thought on retaining her in the cabinet.
Last week a Dutch company hired to supply medical equipment to hospitals in a Sh63 billion programme publicly disowned a price list tabled in parliament by the ministry of Health which exposed Kariuki as corrupt.
Philips Medical Systems Nederland BV was initially contracted by the government to deliver intensive care unit equipment at a cost of Sh3.6 billion.

But after variations, the cost shot up to Sh4.5 billion. Philips Business Development director Roelof Assies told MPs the pricing for the items, according to the contract, was different from what Kariuki tabled in documents.
Insiders add that the Dutch company officials had met Kihanya before they released the dossier and it was her who organised the press to blow up the story so as to portray Kariuki as corrupt and have Mwangi replace her.
Two years ago Kihanya and Nyokabi were named as among owners of companies suspected to have irregularly pocketed millions of shillings in the Sh5.3 billion “HealthGate” or “Mafya House” scam.
Kihanya and Nyokabi are directors of a company that pocketed Sh41 million in questionable payouts which brought the country’s corruption crisis to the president’s doorstep.
They own Sundales International Limited, registered on September 12 2013 – five months after Uhuru’s election as president.
The company was awarded government contracts running into hundreds of millions.
Between September 2014 and February 2017, Sundales won at least five separate tenders from the Kemsa worth Sh270 million.
The Health cabinet secretary then was Cleopas Mailu, who is said to have given Sundales International Limited all the contracts the firm wanted. He feared that Kihanya and Nyokabi would have him sacked as CS due to their closeness to the president.
The Sh41 million wired to the Sundales Intrnational Limited was supposedly payment to supply food to HIV patients.
It was part of Sh515.7 million an internal audit flagged as possible fraud.
Ahead of the 2017 general election, Raila Odinga linked Kenyatta family to the loss of Sh5.2 billion at the ministry of Health.
He claimed that one of the companies mentioned Estama Ltd which was paid to supply 100 container clinics at Sh1 million each, and which have never been supplied, was associated with people in the presidency.
But Kihanya dismissed Raila saying it was wrong for some Kenyans to be demonised simply because they are related to the president.
“It is true, this is my company. But, we have done nothing wrong. We have done a clean business and there are documents to prove that,” she told journalists when the scandal broke out.
But other sources say Kariuki is not a pushover as she enjoys the protection of Uhuru’s younger brother Muhoho Kenyatta.
They cite the fact that though her record in public service is dogged by numerous reports linking her indirectly to mega scandals, she has never been summoned by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations to record a statement.
She still occupies her posh office at Afya House despite the fact that as Public Service CS, billions of shillings were stolen in the infamous NYS second theft.
And even her stay at the Health ministry office is not without controversy as she is said to have evicted senior staff at Afya House to create room for her office.
According to reports, the Health CS cleared the seventh floor at Afya House to create space for her grand office.
Those evicted included the chief finance officer, chief dental specialist, undersecretary for medical equipment, senior deputy secretary and head of mental health.
Her office now occupies over three-quarters of the floor with a kitchen, a changing room and meeting rooms.
Indeed, controversy has stalked Kariuki since she left the Tea Board of Kenya for the cabinet in 2013 with all ministries she has headed being hit by corruption.
She was again on the spot when MPs demanded her impeachment over how she handled the mess at Kenyatta National Hospital and the NYS scandal which took place under her watch as Youth Affairs CS.
At that time, it took the intervention of Uhuru and his deputy William Ruto to make Mandera North MP Bashir Abdullahi, who had sponsored the impeachment motion, to withdraw it.
The MPs pushing for her impeachment claimed she is arrogant, disrespectful and had no regard for rules and procedures.
The legislators had even threatened to start collecting signatures for her impeachment but their noise went quiet after a few days raising doubts about whether she was being protected by an upper hand.
Kariuki was also indirectly implicated in the second NYS scandal that swept aside her PS Lilian Omollo and head of the National Youth Service Richard Ndubai.
Interestingly, she never bore the pressure that forced her predecessor, Anne Waiguru to quit after a similar scandal.
Plucked from the Tea Board of Kenya where she was managing director to become Agriculture principal secretary, Kariuki was promoted to the Youth Affairs ministry after a purge on corruption led to the resignation of six CSs.
Her joining of the Agriculture ministry was however not without drama as she still clang on her board position at the Kenyatta-owned Commercial Bank of Africa despite warning shots from the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission.
Plot to have Kemsa CEO replace Sicily as Health CS