Auditor General Edward Ouko released a report on Wednesday highlighting the various county expenditures focusing mainly on travel expenses.
The 47 county assemblies are reported to have spent Ksh4.90 Billion of tax payer’s money on domestic travel in the 2016/2017 financial year.
Several counties were mentioned in a bad light as they could not support stated expenditures with any formal documents.
Out of the total amount recorded as travel expenditure, Ksh2.09 Billion was not approved by the County Assemblies, yet it was still used.
In Lamu County all of the domestic travel by the county officials and Members of the County Assembly (MCAs) was completely unauthorized, followed closely by Tana River county where 93 percent of the total travel expenses was yet to be approved.
Over in Taita Taveta County, no submission of expenditure report was availed to the government auditor for analysis.
The Auditor General’s report also revealed that Counties used more than the constitutional threshold of 70 percent on recurrent expense, implying that taxpayers paid more whilst Counties spent over and beyond the allocated budget.
In regards to foreign travels that couldn’t be backed up by the relevant documents:
Bomet county topped the list at 87.6 percent, West Pokot came in at number two at 57.4 percent.
Tharaka Nithi, Meru and Kisumu county made up the rest of the list of shame with 55.4 percent, 43.4percent, and 30.9 percent respectively of undocumented travel expenses.
In the damning report, Mr Ouko revealed that Ksh14.6 Billion of supported pending bills was the overall total across all the counties.
“The only way citizens can know how their money is spent is through active participation. These amounts are huge, and we are looking at how we can have a good framework of social accountability. We will have to transfer accountability to the lowest level,” he affirmed.
The report indicated that Nairobi City County occupied the number one spot in terms of own revenue generation which stood at Ksh10.9 billion.
Tharaka Nithi County emerged number one in regards to overall domestic travel expenditure which stood at Ksh540 million.
The report also revealed a total of Ksh134.9 Billion pending bills, with Nairobi County taking the lion's share with Ksh101.3 billion, while Mombasa had pending bills amounting to Ksh4.6 billion.
Mr Ouko had earlier revealed that nearly Ksh13 Million collected as motor vehicle clamping fees in Nakuru County could not be accounted for.
