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Scam alert! Beware Facebook page, websites promising ‘free’ water tanks with KSh380 ‘fee’

A now-deleted Facebook post offered to donate free water harvesting and conservation tanks to Kenyans.

But it’s a scam.

“We have come to an agreement with our partner non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) and come up with a programme of distributing free water tanks with a capacity of 5000 litres to at least 1000 households per county to enable them harvest and store rainwater for future use,” read the post, on the page “Free Water Tanks From NGOs”.



KSh380 ‘booking fee’


The post linked to a website, which is still live. On the site, people are asked to pay a KSh380 “booking fee”, via M-Pesa mobile money transfer, to get their water tanks. It claims the fee will be automatically refunded if an applicant’s booking is rejected.

The scam also appears on another website where people are again asked to pay the KSh380 “fee”, but to a different M-Pesa number.

The recent post has been deleted, but similar posts shared in January can still be seen on the page.

Similar post exposed by NGO


In another deleted post, the Kenya Water for Health Organization (Kwaho) and World Vision Kenya were mentioned as NGOs that were giving out the free tanks.

On 10 February 2020 Kwaho shared a screenshot of the post on Twitter with “SCAM ALERT” stamped on it in red.

“Beware of such scam! We have no such running projects at the moment,” Kwaho tweeted. “Please note that any official communication is only advertised on our official platforms.”

Edited posts circulating afterwards merely mention “NGOs” without naming specific organisations.

Don’t pay a KSh380 “booking fee” for “free” water tanks. The websites and Facebook page are all part of the same scam. – Grace Gichuhi




 

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