Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has dismissed claims that salary delays in some counties are a result of the National Treasury's failure to release the equitable share allocation on time.
Speaking on Wednesday, September 24, during a brief interview on Ramogi FM, Mbadi said the Treasury had already cleared all the pending arrears up to August and that the allocation was adequate to pay all county workers.
"If money had not been released to counties, then you would have noticed that all the counties would not have been able to pay their workers' salaries," Mbadi stated.
"If you do your research, you will realise that there are counties that have already paid up to August salaries. We had already cleared all the pending arrears, and we recently released capitation for July and August," he clarified.
In a public disclosure made in the Kenya Gazette issue of Friday, September 19, the Treasury indicated it had released Ksh32.93 billion to the devolved units in August.
However, the CS clarified that the only money that had not yet been released was the September capitation, which he vowed to disburse before the end of the month.
During the interview, Mbadi attributed the delays in disbursement to some counties to the late submission of their budgets to the National Treasury.
He further asserted that some counties tend to submit their budgets riddled with discrepancies, which result in the non-approval by the Controller of Budget (CoB).
"The main reason money is sometimes delayed to counties is because they also delay in sending their budgets. How can we give them money when the Controller of Budget has not even approved their budget?" Mbadi asked.
Mbadi's clarification comes a week after Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja claimed that the delays in clearing the salary arrears owed to Nairobi County workers were due to the Treasury's non-disbursement of equitable allocation to counties.
Sakaja, who spoke on Thursday, September 18, during an interview on Radio Jambo, revealed that Nairobi County had failed to receive its equitable share from the national government for almost two months.
"The salaries for this month have been delayed because Nairobi County receive an equitable share and also generates its own source revenue. So we have not received the equitable share for two months," Sakaja revealed.
The governor noted that in recent months, his administration has been relying on the county's own source revenue to pay workers, which, according to Sakaja, was unsustainable.
