Why we should investigate 'fire accidents' in counties

There is something pretty fishy with fires that break out in some of our government offices. Recently, these fires have had this unusual tendency of striking some particular departments and not others. County Government offices have become regular “victims”. And Finance departments are the hardest hit

A fire that broke out at the Kisumu County offices three days ago razed down the finance and planning office, which also hosts the budgeting, accounting services, revenue and supply chain management offices.

The fire came just a few months after similar infernos reduced the finance and planning offices in Kitui and Busia counties to ashes.

Homa Bay and Migori counties had suffered similar ‘fate’ earlier after their finance offices were also gutted down.

While county officials have been quick to label them as accidents, the coincidences involved have been mindboggling.

The most obvious is that the fires exclusively start in the finance departments and are put out before they can spread to other departments, but not before they consume computers and other files containing crucial documents.

In Kisumu, pending bills for contractors were among the destroyed documents, the fire also coinciding with a period when a headcount was being conducted in a bid to weed out ghost workers.

In Homa Bay, the fire struck barely a day after sleuths from the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) visited the offices as they investigated alleged fraudulent loss of Sh5 billion. Busia County had also been hit by a corruption storm before the fire, with Governor Sospeter Ojaamong charged in court.

One suspicious Kenyan was left wondering why not a single inferno originated from the kitchen, the room where fire lives.

Another notable coincident is that the fires start in the dead of the night, at around 2.a.m., and it takes ages to put them out despite the fact that county fire engines are positioned right outside the buildings.

In Busia, the 2am flames raged metres away from a state-of-the-art fire engine bought at Sh55 million in 2016.

Some of the fires have also happened when the respective Governors and finance officials are out of the counties, if not the country.

The last and most worrying ‘twist of fate’ is that no one is ever held to account for these fires despite avid assurances by the county governments and the police that “no stone will be left unturned”.

These coincidences are too many to be true and point to outright acts of arson meant to conceal the rot in county finance offices.

A vast majority of counties governments have since 2013 been embroiled in corruption scandals that have cost the taxpayer billions of shillings.

Many crooked officials, including Governors, have used crude means to hide evidevidenceence and avoid audit queries that point to their shady dealings.

We must thus call a spade a spade and admit that it is not beyond their ability to sacrifice several public offices and equipment just to avoid punishment for pocketing millions of shillings belonging to taxpayers. We must read gross mischief in these fire incidents until someone proves us wrong.

It is time the DCI, the DPP and the Auditor General give special focus to these accidents that sound more like some crude jokes.

Deep investigations must be undertaken and any individual found culpable made to fill the pinch. Such characters belong in jail.

It should also be made mandatory for all county governments to have proper backup systems located outside the counties to cushion the public from major disruptions in the case of fire accidents.

Let it not be lost on us that these fires that selectively consume financial documents are visiting great agony on hardworking suppliers and contractors who cannot be paid simply because pending bills have been destroyed, at time leading to auctioning of their assets. We must fight this impunity.