Senate Majority Leader Aaron Cheruiyot has castigated county governments for mismanaging funds through salaries, warning that the Parliament will take action against governors who do not manage their resources properly.
Speaking on Saturday, March 30, the Kericho senator said that governors are spending a huge chunk of their budget on paying salaries, more than other development projects.
According to Cheruiyot, Kenyan governors use more than 50 percent of their budget on salaries, which is 15 percent more than what is recommended.
As a result, Cheruiyot confirmed that Parliament intends to pass a law that will halt funds to the county governments that are mismanaging their budgets until they develop a clear blueprint on how they will balance development projects and pay salaries.
"Many county governments have now turned away from serving the common citizen and are only focused on hiring people. In the PFM law, our county governments are not supposed to use more than 35 percent to pay salaries but any counties are using more than 50% of the resources to pay the salaries," he said.
"If you use 50 percent to pay people's salaries, how will you build roads for people, and where will you get money to restock medicines in the hospitals? I want governors to be accountable. And I want to emphasize that we will pass a law soon that will pass a law that will see governors who are only focusing on salaries alone, we will stop the money you are getting until we see that you are doing 65 percent of development works and 35 percent on salaries," he said.
For a long time, the governors have been up in arms over the delay in the release of critical funds from the National Treasury to counties, laying blame on the Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi.
The governors have been protesting budget cuts to counties amounting to Ksh25 billion, demanding answers from the National Treasury regarding budget reductions, which they argue will severely impact donor-funded projects.
On Friday, March 21, the Council of Governors, led by Kirinyaga Governor Anne Waiguru, threatened to shut down county operations over the county budget allocations.
"We, as governors, issue a 14-day ultimatum to the government, failure of which county governments will shut down,” Waiguru stated.
The governors demanded that the Senate should reject the budget cuts and push for revisions before approving the final budget.
“We have stalled projects for water, roads, and healthcare. Unless we truly do not care about what is happening in this country—especially since public complaints have consistently been about service delivery and stalled projects—we need to get serious,” Waiguru noted.
