By Diana Wanyonyi
Mombasa County, Kenya: Celine Mumbi found herself unemployed in early 2019 when she lost her sales job. She decided to invest her savings in launching a muguka( leaves of Catha edulis, chewed as a stimulant) business, and her kiosk is now situated in the Tononoka area, near the center of Mombasa city along the Kenyan coast. Celine is the eldest of four siblings. She also remembers that in 2019, her mother, who used to work casual jobs in Nyali, was one of the individuals diagnosed among the patients zero with Covid-19.
Mumbi faced a significant challenge, as she had the responsibility of looking after her mother and her younger siblings. In a difficult turn of events, Mumbi and her family had to bring her ailing mother to the Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital, commonly referred to as Makadara Hospital.
Unfortunately, they were turned away due to a lack of available hospital beds, insufficient oxygen, and inadequate medical supplies to address the Covid-19 virus. According to Mumbi, they were not alone in their plight, as other families also found themselves stranded outside the hospital with their sick loved ones.
“I was disappointed when we reached the hospital and we were told there was no space for any COVID-19 patients, this meant my mum would not be able to be admitted and get medication, I was devastated, we had no choice but to take her home with us where we had to pay for a health practitioner who was taking care of her” She explains.
As the saying goes, tough times call for tough people, Mumbi and her family decided to sell a piece of her father’s ancestral land to cater with medication and purchase COVID-19 kits.
“Surely, we spent a lot of money and resources treating our mother, the treatment kitty was very expensive, COVID-19 medicines were highly-priced too, yet we know very well, as Kenyans, the pricing and availability of some medical essentials were either lowered or either given free by the government through the ministry of health,”Mumbi lamented.
“Lucky enough my mum recovered well but our question for both national and Mombasa county is, can you be transparent to the public to tell us how COVID-19 funds were used and transparency in accountability?” she finally asked.
According to an Audit Findings Report for the COVID-19 funds carried by Haki Africa in September 2020 with partners’ support from Amkeni Wakenya and the UNDP, Most community members are not aware of the funds allocated for the COVID-19 kitty.
There are no proper channels for disseminating information on COVID-19 funds. This made it impossible for the community to have oversight of the funds given by the National government as well as other well-wishers.
This was brought about by the case study done by Haki Africa questioning how the Technical University of Mombasa (TUM) which was one of the isolation centers set up from scratch with state-of-the-art equipment, 300 beds and ambulances among other facilities. The source of funding for the center has not been made public and it is not known who paid for what.
According to the Haki report, the response of service providers to the Mombasa County government was further explained by Mombasa County government, at that time, they had not utilized any resources provided by the national government for COVID-19 response until the end of June, when they received Kshs. 200 million. However, this funding arrived at the close of the financial year, and due to various restrictions, none of it had been expended by the County.
An unspecified amount was used in setting up isolation centers, medical equipment at the facilities, and drug supplies. The county emergency fund was used to equip facilities and ensure all was done well. The whole kitty was spent to ensure smooth operations.
Recently, the UK High Commission offered to support cash disbursements to needy deserving families. The money will go directly to the beneficiaries. The county government has only received funds from donors and well-wishers. The donations include hospital beds and beddings. The County Government representatives promised to share more reports with the community on the funding in a follow-up meeting.
Mathias Shipeta, Rapid Response Officer at Haki Africa was among the several members who assisted in the report making, said that Mombasa county was more prepared through the leadership of the former governor Ali Hassan Joho to fight COVID-19, however, he observed that one of the barriers of mass testing was inadequate of mass testing kits.
“We had a lot of challenges, especially with the procurement of testing kits, we didn’t have enough. I remember there was one time I contracted COVID-19 during work at a ferry because I was stationed there to assist the ferry users to cross. I had to be tested three times” he explained.
Shipeta however, said that it was a challenge for Mombasa County by then to conduct public participation in the COVID-19 funds audit.
“It remains a gray area as many people were not informed on how much was spent, how much was coming from the governor himself through his foundation, and how much was coming in through the national government” says Mathias
Adding “Things were not clear. You wouldn’t tell if it was Hassan Joho’s money or well-wisher’s money because there was also a time when private well-wishers would give money towards the cause because there was an appeal for more private stakeholders to bring their support during that time. We didn’t know how much didn’t know much came in from the national government towards COVID-19” Said Shipeta.
“I participated in a demonstration and I remember I was among people who were arrested for participating during the uproar of Covid-19 funds with KEMSA and were embezzled in Nairobi. I have actively been involved in the daily follow-up issues that deal with accountability” He said.
In 2022, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)provided support to the Kwacha Afrika organization for conducting an analysis of COVID-19 expenditures in Mombasa County. Regrettably, as indicated by Karen Kenga, who serves as the Head of Programs and holds the role of a monitoring and evaluation officer at Kwacha Afrika, a youth-led non-governmental organization located in Mombasa, it has come to their attention that Mombasa County has yet to submit its COVID-19 expenditure reports to the office of the Auditor General.
“From an analysis that we did, most of the information was drawn from the county budget documents that were available from the years of 2019/2022, to be able to extract what allocations were stated for the COVID-19 pandemic and then we were also able to get document from the analysis was done by Auditor general so as we go scrutinize how much money was allocated towards the Covid-19 implementation, unfortunately until today, there is no information that has been submitted to the auditor general.The county government of Mombasa has failed to submit any documents regarding the expenditure of the COVID-19 funds that they received” She questioned.
Adding ,“The only information that is available from the auditor general is the information on expenditure on vaccinations but for all other programs including the social welfare of people getting cash transfers, food programs, and food distribution programs there is no information,” Blamed Kenga.
Simon Katee, Juhudi Community Support Centre executive director in Mombasa, expressed the need for accountability for COVID-19 funds by the county government of Mombasa saying that they need to come out clean.
“There was a committee that was formed through the county government by then during the leadership of former governor Hassan Joho, the mandate of the committee was to deal with issues on Covid-19, and this was after a lot of complaining that is when we also had some members from health department who came in, there were some funds which were promised to be used, however, there was also a lot of donations which were given by members” says Katee.
Adding “In all these things, when it comes to matters of accountability, how some of these were spent, where is the data, do we have any evidence to show how money was used? To date we haven’t gotten that information” Lamented Katee.
Katee said that despite the efforts of members of the civil societies who were part of the committee asking and questioning how the funds were used, it fell on deaf ears.
“I know there are some funds of 200M shillings which were given out by the county, however even when you ask how it was spent from across spaces including some officers from Coast General hospital, they are not aware, so this raises questions on accountability.”
He advised that it is good for counties in Kenya to be accountable for funds so as to inform and keep confidence in the taxpayers.
A Kilifi-based, Revital Healthcare EPZ Limited in Kikambala is the largest manufacturer of medical devices exporting to over 30 countries over the world and producing over 50 medical devices, and was at the forefront in fighting COVID-19.
Revital Healthcare sales and marketing product development director Roneek Vora said, the firm donated medical devices to Mombasa County.
“We supplied COVID-19 swaps to Kilifi county, we supported Mombasa country and we also donated surgical face masks to various agencies such as Kenya Wildlife Services and others” says Roneek.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the firm was contracted by UNICEF India to supply 50 million pieces of the 2ml vaccine syringes as the world braces for a shortage of the commodity.
Vora dismissed the notion from many people that medical products manufactured in the country are more expensive than imported equivalents.
“We are able to export syringes all the way to India and to Pakistan, this shows that we are not only affordable but we have a high quality as well. We need to remove the factor of thinking because it’s African based, it’s expensive, it’s not” explains Vora.
Revital Healthcare is Africa’s only World Health Organisation (WHO) prequalified manufacturer of vaccine syringes.
