Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich's wisdom has prevented almost Ksh60 billion from ending up in the hands of corrupt officials.
A heist as defined by the Macmillan dictionary is an organized attempt by thieves to steal something, and in this context, county government officials had inflated pending bills by up to Ksh 57,126,639,871.
Nation reported that CS Rotich ordered a special audit into the pending bills that counties had accumulated, following suspicion by Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo.
"The Controller of Budget got suspicious after counties submitted astronomical figures owed to suppliers and contractors requesting for authorisation for payment," the local newspaper wrote.
CS Rotich then directed Auditor General Edward Ouko to oversee the special audit process which has made the shocking revelations.
Treasury provided Ksh273 million to pay various certified public accountants who carried out the exercise on behalf of the Auditor General.
The audit has now cleared the way for Ksh51 billion verified eligible bills to be paid. Nairobi County leads with Ksh10 billion due and is followed by Mombasa (Ksh3.3 billion).
Counties with the least debts include Makueni (Ksh 375,360) and Baringo (Ksh13 million).
Kajiado emerged as the only county without any pending debts.
Kikuyu MP Kimani Ichung’wa, who is the Chairperson of the National Assembly Budget and Appropriations Committee, explained that pending bills are as a result of poor budgeting especially when counties make unrealistic revenue targets which they base expenditure on.
“They include in their budgets unrealistic figures of own source revenues, which they are not able to raise and since the law allows for procurement on the basis of an approved budget, they make commitments on the basis of their approved budgets which they cannot meet as they do not raise the revenues they projected,” he told Nation.
