About 35 Members of County Assemblies from Kitui are set to be surcharged with Ksh21 Million which was illegally allocated to them.
The county legislators are said to have pocketed the funds during a foreign trip.
The ward representatives had already exhausted the funds they had allocated to travels in the last budget forcing the county’s Finance executive to authorise expenditure outside of it.
The only catch attached to the authorisation was that the MCAs would regularise the expenditure through a supplementary budget.
In a standoff with their governor Charity Ngilu the MCAs shot down the supplementary budget citing that the county had reduced the funds allocated for development and increased recurrent expenditure.
The MCAs seemed unaware that among the items in the supplementary budget was an allocation for their travel expenditure.
The Daily Nation quoted an MCA who wanted to remain anonymous stated that they shot down the budget to undermine the county executive but unknowingly sealed their own fate.
In May, Finance Executive Mary Nguli had allowed Assembly Clerk Elijah Mutambuki to fund the MCAs who had been scheduled to visit Singapore, UAE, Canada and Malaysia.
The affected MCAs are now being surcharged between Ksh 450,000 and Ksh 610,000 to recover the Ksh21.4 Million they spent on the trip for allowances, air tickets and money paid out to facilitators of various conferences.
The MCAS will also have to forego another Ksh8.6 Million allocated to them for development.
As things stand at the moment the MCAs fate seems to be sealed as the supplementary budget was to be passed before the end of the 2018/19 financial year which came to a close on Saturday.
