Troubled Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) Managing Director Alex Gitari is a man under siege.
Reports have emerged that Mr Gitari is a key target of a renewed bid by powerful State House forces to push out individuals who played a role in supporting Azimio leader Raila Odinga’s failed presidential bid by mobilizing to offer monetary assistance to his campaigns that raked in billions of taxpayers’ money.
According to sources, Gitari and the General Manager of the HR department Anthony Njagi practised gross misconduct by pumping millions of shillings into Azimio La Umoja at the expense of staff welfare.
Insiders further revealed that whenever the two remitted money to Raila’s campaign kitty, they benefited from heavy kickbacks.
It is also alleged that Gitari and Njagi landed their respective lucrative positions through the influence of former powerful Interior PS Karanja Kibicho and the outgoing Transport PS Paul Maringa.
At one particular time, former Transport CS James Macharia complained regarding circumstances under which Gitari and Njagi manoeuvred their way into office.
The fresh troubles against him come at a time some whistleblowers have written to a local newspaper with a view of exposing a scheme by a cartel at the National Land Commission (NLC) working in cahoots with officials at the KAA to unlawfully claim airport land worth Sh296m.
In an excerpt from the Daily Nation on Tuesday, December 13, 2022, the informers allege that the said cartel is targeting the Mombasa International Airport by claiming to own an access road through the airfield’s runway.
“Your excellency, these are trying economic times. The Kenyan government cannot afford to lose tens of billions of shillings to graft cartels and their proxies. To achieve your most noble promise to the Kenyan people, this must stop!” the notice reads in part.
Workers at KAA have also been lamenting impunity at the hands of Gitari and Njagi which has left them heavily demoralized.
Additionally, the duo has been accused of negotiating collective bargaining agreements with the workers’ union only to dishonor such deals.
A case in point is when they allegedly negotiated with the workers union for a 13 per cent pay rise in salaries but as workers were waiting to harvest at the end of the month in 2016, KAA broke their end of the promise and defaulted.
It is imperative to note that ever since the KAA board of directors confirmed Gitari as the MD effective July 8 2021 for three years, the institution KAA has been linked to several scandalous deals under his leadership.
This included a plot to fast-track the deal to hand over Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to Kenya Airways.
Kenya Airways had submitted a proposal to KAA to run the airport for 30 years while paying concession fees to the operator.
In another scandal, KAA was preparing to pay a Chinese firm billions of shillings for no work done on a second terminal at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
It took the intervention of the public investments’ committee of parliament, and it is before this committee that Gitari denied that there was any intention to pay Anhui Construction Engineering Group Ltd and China National Aero-Technology Engineering Company.
The project was cancelled in March 2016 after a launch by Uhuru that was to cost Sh56 billion.
It was to expand JKIA’s capacity to 20 million passengers but it turned controversial after cartels dominated the whole process.
The Chinese firm was demanding Sh17.6 billion as compensation for the termination of the contract and had been paid Sh4.2 billion, whose recovery MPs said is in doubt.
Gitari’s name was also featured in the mystery that surrounded Covid-19 gear that China billionaire Jack Ma donated to Kenya at a time Covid-19 was ravaging the country.
The Kenya Civil Society group, while protesting the theft, noted that Gitari in his capacity as KAA MD should have come clean about how the consignment was stolen since he was part of the government dignitaries who received the donation at the airport.
