A House team wants the Interior Ministry to reconstitute the committee that spearheaded the resettlement of Kenyans who were displaced following the 2007-08 post-election violence.
The Special Funds committee wants the team rebuilt to conclude the payouts amid revelations that some Sh272 million IDPs' cash is lying dormant at CBK vaults.
The committee, chaired by Migori Woman Representative Fatuma Mohammed, argued that while most of the Internally Displaced Persons had been reintegrated back to society, a number remain unpaid.
The House team observed that IDP camps were also closed at the expiry of the three years of the committee’s existence before all IDPs were compensated.
“The matter is unresolved,” the committee said in a report following its review of Auditor General Nancy Gathungu’s report on the accounts of the National Humanitarian Fund.
The fund is domiciled at the Interior Ministry. The tenure of the committee enlisted in December 2014 to manage the fund ended in 2017. As a result, no funds can be disbursed or payment schedules prepared.
“The committee recommends that within six months of adoption of (its) report, the Interior CS should reconstitute a functional national consultative coordination committee on IDPs to wind up issues related to the fund,” the report reads.
There are concerns that the account, which has been idle for years, is not earning interest on the deposits. The fund was created in February 2008.
The ministry said due to the absence of the committee, it is unable to invest the idle balances in an interest-earning account as required by law.
“It is also true that at the time of the audit, the bank accounts were dormant and were holding idle funds despite provisions in the Act and completion of disbursement of grants to IDPs,” the ministry said.
The ministry said the outstanding balances held by the commercial banks were remitted to the outstanding CBK National Humanitarian Fund account for further action.
“All the commercial bank accounts have since been closed and balances transferred to the CBK account as per the attached CBK, Cooperative Bank and National Bank statements,” the report reads.
For the ministry, the National Humanitarian Fund cannot be wound up unless by an Act of Parliament, saying it explains the indefinite life of the fund that the auditor queried.
There are modalities and legal issues involved in the closure or winding up of such a fund, the ministry held, even as MPs marked the query unresolved.
IDPs, especially those who were in designated camps, were compensated with amounts ranging from Sh400,000 and above, as well as land for development.
Hundreds of IDPs, however, remain uncompensated for the disruption meted out on their livelihoods during the 2007-08 violence.
Nyanza and Western IDPs have a petition pending before the National Assembly to help them unlock a compensation standoff with Harambee House.
The petitioners say they were neither resettled nor compensated like their counterparts who were in IDP camps in other parts of the country.
The fund is administered by the Prevention, Protection and Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons and Affected Communities Act, 2012.
The law provides that the fund’s accounting officer, with the approval of the National Treasury, invest or place monies from the fund in a deposit interest-earning account.
“Any interest earned on monies so invested or deposited shall be placed to the credit of the fund,” the law reads.
