Nairobi Governor Mike Mbuvi Sonko's efforts to frustrate Nairobi Metropolitan Services Director-General Mohamed Badi in the running of the key functions in the capital have been cut short.
This is because NMS will no longer depend on the Nairobi City County Government for budgetary allocations.
The office will instead receive funding from the National Treasury, which is under the office of the president.
NMS is expected to be allocated Ksh27.9 billion by the National Treasury for its operations in the financial year 2020/2021.
The national government estimates that NMS will require Ksh18.6 billion for recurrent expenditure and Ksh9.32 billion for development expenditure for that financial year.
NMS is also set to receive an additional Ksh1.5 billion for the Mukuru slums renewal projects.
In a letter signed by Treasury CS Ukur Yattani and addressed to National Assembly Clerk Michael Sialai, he explained that Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua had submitted the budget estimates for the NMS after Treasury’s submission to Parliament.
Yattani had proposed inclusion of the NMS estimates in the national budget to be under the presidency, which was presented to the National Assembly on May 14, 2020.
General Badi has been working with a constrained budget following the tussle of allocation of funds by City Hall with the four key functions namely; health, transport, public works, planning & development, in limbo.
Since the transfer of functions, General Badi has been depending on Ksh3.8 billion that it was given on April 17, 2020, by the National Treasury to kick start its operations.
An attempt by the Nairobi County Assembly to allocate Ksh15 billion to the new office through a supplementary budget has been declined by Governor Sonko.
Sonko, through his spokesperson, Ben Mulwa, previously maintained that if proper laws and protocols were not adhered to in the formulation of the budget, he would not sign off on it, further adding that he had no problem backing out of the deal with President Uhuru Kenyatta, that led to the creation of NMS as the body tasked with carrying out the functions.
