National Oil chief executive Sumayya Hassan-Athmani. PHOTO | FILE
The managing director of National Oil Corporation of Kenya (Nock), Sumayya Hassan-Athmani, has been sent on compulsory leave.
It
is understood that the board, which was constituted in May, is
demanding a full audit of the corporation’s operations in light of a
Sh270 million loss booked for the half year period of the current
financial year.
Sources privy to the activities at the
corporation say that the board had ordered for a forensic audit to be
carried out by November last year but it failed due to “interference by
management”.
“We felt that for an audit process to take
place it was necessary to have the CEO step aside. As soon as the
exercise is completed, we will engage her on the way forward,” said a
board member who spoke to Daily Nation on condition of anonymity.
There are no specific accusations that have been levied against Ms Sumayya even as her fate at the helm of Nock remains unknown.
Attempts to get a comment from Ms Sumayya failed as she neither responded to calls or a text message from Daily Nation.
Sumayya
was in her second term in office running for a period of three years
after then cabinet secretary for energy and petroleum Davis Chirchir
renewed her contract starting April 1, 2014.
Mr
Chirchir’s move was faced with criticism especially from the Consumers
Federation of Kenya (Cofek) which had at the time petitioned the head of
public service and the Auditor General for a special audit of the
corporation.
However, in an interview with the Nation
at the time, Mr Chirchir maintained that his decision to renew Ms
Sumayya’s contract was influenced by the need to maintain a gender
balance in appointments of heads of parastatals within the energy and
petroleum docket.
Achieve gender balance
“We
were keen on giving the job to a lady so that we can achieve gender
balance in management of parastatals within this ministry,” said Mr
Chirchir.
At the time, Nock was the only energy sector
parastatal headed by a female chief executive after Laurencia Njagi,
former company secretary for Kenya Power had declined to take up
appointment to head the energy regulatory commission.
Meanwhile
MaryJane Mwangi has been appointed as the acting chief executive
officer at Nock. Until this appointment, she worked at the corporation
as the general manager in charge of downstream operations.
Last
year, Nock won a lucrative deal to supply fuel lubricants and bitumen
to government ministries and agencies in an exclusive arrangement that
locked out private oil marketers.
The directive giving
supply rights to Nock was issued through a letter written by chief of
staff and head of the public service Joseph Kinyua to principal
secretaries and copied to cabinet secretaries on April 30, 2015.
The
directive meant that private dealers were locked out of the Sh300
billion, 10,000 kilometre annuity road construction project that was
planned for implementation and which was bound to consume tonnes of
bitumen.
In the past, Nock has been on the spot for irregular procurement procedures involving some of its senior managers.
In
August 2012, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC)
recommended to the DPP that Nock’s managing director, Ms Sumayya and her
then supply manager Maimuna Kassim be charged with abuse of office
after it was found that they did not follow the law in contracting a
firm to supply diesel.
EACC accused the duo of using
direct procurement as opposed to open tendering to identify the company
that was supposed to supply the product.
Ms Sumayya’s
temporary exit from Nock comes at a time when other changes to the
management of parastatals within the energy sector are under
implementation.
Ms Sumayya’s temporary exit from Nock
comes just weeks after Flora Okoth who has been acting as managing
director of the Kenya Pipeline Company proceeded on leave under unclear
circumstances and was replaced by Joe Sang also in acting capacity.
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