Kanze Dena’s Sh158 billion ‘typing error’ from China
Statehouse spokesperson Kanze Dena on Friday made a mistake of a whopping Sh158.5 billion in her communication on the funding Kenya had secured from China.
Dena, who is the State House spokesperson and head of the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit (PSCU), communicated that the country had secured Sh226 billion funding while the true figure was Sh67.5 billion.
The difference of Sh158.5 billion is a costly error that left many Kenyans in awe and sent media houses into a frenzy of trying to explain why their initial stories had a mistake.
It took PSCU four hours to realise the mistake and issue a corrected statement on the funding Kenya had secured from china for two major projects.
The error came from the amount secured for the Konza data centre and Smart cities projects that PSCU initially placed at Sh175 billion instead of Sh17.5 billion.
EXPRESSWAY
The second project which is the JKIA to James Gichuru expressway also had an error initially being allocated Sh51 billion instead of Sh50 billion.
In the initial communication sent out to newsrooms at 3pm, PSCU wrote, “The projects include the Konza Data Centre and Smart Cities Project to be undertaken by Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei at a cost of Shs 175 billion and the construction of the Nairobi JKIA to James Gichuru expressway on a PPP arrangement by the China Road and Bridge Corporation for Shs 51 billion.”
An updated version of the statement came in at 7pm reading, “The projects include the Konza Data Centre and Smart Cities Project to be undertaken by Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei at a cost of Shs 17.5 billion and the construction of the Nairobi JKIA to James Gichuru expressway on a PPP arrangement by the China Road and Bridge Corporation for Shs 50 billion.”
The error evokes memories of the 2009 when President Uhuru Kenyatta , then serving as the Finance minister made a Sh9.2 billion “typing error” in the Supplementary Budget.
Mr Kenyatta was summoned by a joint committee of Finance and that of Budget alongside his then permanent secretary Joseph Kinyua who is now the head of public service in his government.
Kenyatta had termed the Sh9.2 billion error affecting 200 line items as an oversight arising from a typing error and he pleaded innocence over the matter.