Governors Ask Senators to Reject Treasury CS Henry Proposal to Slash County Funds

Governors have appealed to the Senate to reject Treasury CS Henry Rotich's proposal to cut funds allocation to counties by Sh15 Billion.

Speaking to journalists on Thursday at Council of Governor's headquarters, Turkana Governor Josphat Nanok termed the move to have the county budgets from Sh302 Billion to Sh248 Billion unconstitutional.

"Section 5 of the Division of Revenue Act provides that the national government will bear the revenue shortfall and in case of revenue over performance, it shall be accrued to the national government.

"We appeal to the Senate to ensure this proposal by the National Treasury is negated," the Council of Governors chairman stated.

[caption caption="Turkana Governor Josphat Nanok"][/caption]

He added that the county heads had not been consulted before the CS decided to lower their revenue allocation.

"To this end, we are asking the National Treasury to honour its commitment to the counties and not arbitrarily make decisions without consultations," he conveyed.

Nanok stated that the low budgetary allocation would greatly undermine service delivery to their counties adding that the government had only released 33 percent of the expected 75 percent disbursements to date.

"From our consolidated data, about 20 counties are badly off having received below 25 percent of their allocations. About 24 counties are below 45 percent and only 3 counties have surpassed their allocations," he maintained.

Earlier on Wednesday, Rotich stated "The government has no money. We are broke." - reports which he refuted on Thursday.

The CS categorically refuted the allegations which quoted him as having admitted that the government was broke, which he termed as fake.

[caption caption="Treasury CS Henry Rotich"][/caption]