Nairobi__Millions of shillings went to waste in Brazil when the Olympics committee paid for expensive rooms for the President and Sports Cabinet Secretary that were not used.

Mr Stephen arap Soi, who was chief of mission, said the decision was made at a meeting attended by Sports Cabinet Secretary Hassan Wario and PS Richard Ekai in June.

"The directive was: 'You leave a room on the cruise ship in the event the Head of State decides to come. We paid $605 per day for 18 days, bed and breakfast for each room," said Mr Soi.

He said the two rooms, including Mr Wario’s were never used, meaning Sh2.2 million went to waste.

Mr Soi dragged other senior officials, among them Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo and Solicitor-General Njee Muturi into the fiasco that is under investigation by the National Assembly’s Labour and Social Welfare Committee.

He said he was also asked to reserve two rooms at a cost of $564 per day for Senate and National Assembly chairpersons of the Labour and Social Welfare committees.

This stunned members of the committee because the team was sponsored by Parliament, which normally gives legislators a per diem to find their own accommodation.

"Colleagues know where I stayed because we were in the same place," said Mr David Were, the chairman of the committee on Tuesday.

"It looks like someone used your name to spend government money totalling about Sh2 million," Aldai MP Cornelly Serem told Mr Were. "With that for the President’s room, this comes to more than Sh5 million. Someone must take responsibility," he said.

SH7.19 MILLION SPENT

Mr Soi said Deputy President William Ruto was accommodated at the Sofitel Hotel at a cost of $890 (Sh89,000). He said the solicitor-general and another senior official also stayed there.

Mr Soi said he was also asked to book rooms for two PSs at a hotel where the CS eventually stayed and for the chairman of the Sports Fund, presidents of Athletics Kenya, National Sports Council, the Solicitor-General and the Controller of Budget. These were paid for in advance, meaning Sh7.19 million was spent.

Sports CS Wario told the commission a planned purge of the leadership of the Olympics committee was the start of a mission to clean up the organisation.

He said he plans to work with the International Olympics Committee to change the constitution of the local chapter to align it with the Sports Act. "The end game is we must clean up the team," he told the committee members, some of whom travelled to Brazil, among them Cherangany MP Wesley Korir, the captain of the Kenyan team.

He said the Olympics Committee is one of sports federations in Kenya that uses its independence to circumvent Kenyan law and act with impunity, often soiling Kenya’s image.

"For a long time, sports federations in this country have managed to operate undercover, utilising an apparent anomaly in their respective constitutions acting with impunity, citing their autonomy that allows them to directly deal with the mother international bodies and sidelining the government," he said.