Relocating Mathari Mental Hospital to a modern facility that is expected to be established in a 200 acre piece of land in Karen, near Ngong is expected to cost taxpayers a whopping Kshs5 billion.
The modern facility is aimed at providing better care, enough space and easing pressure among employees, which is currently being witnessed at the hospital, according to a publication by the Business Daily.
Currently, the hospital sits on an approximately 84-acre piece of land in the slums of Mathare.
The auditor general Nancy Gathungu said that the parcels will be exchanged but terms to oversee that have not been clearly outlined to be able to establish whether the Mathari parcel of land will remain under the ministry of health as well as considerations of values on the parcels being exchanged.
“Available records indicate the hospital will be relocated to a new location in Ngong, Kajiado County where a modern Neuropsychiatric National Teaching and Referral Hospital will be established at a cost of Sh5,000,000,000 over a two-year period,” Gathungu said in an audit report on health ministry book of accounts..
Gathungu also raised the concern of the encroachment of Mathari hospital piece of land which has no title deed. She noted that the land is owned by the ministry of health but the ministry only has an allotment letter to confirm the ownership.
“In the circumstances, the value of money and ownership of the land could not be established,” Gathungu said while questioning renovations going on at the facility that has been in existence since its establishment by the colonialists in 1910.
Apparently, an undisclosed private developer has erected a temporal fence on a portion of the land that had not been fenced
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