Members of County Assemblies have criticized the Nairobi Metropolitan Service (NMS) for failing to produce their report regarding the Ksh 27.1 billion allocated by City Hall for the past nine months.
The Nairobi County Assembly urged the institution to appear before various assembly committees to account for the expenses, arguing that delays to submit the report would affect the budgeting process for the fast-approaching financial year.
According to the assembly's Budget and Appropriation Committee chairperson Robert Mbatia, NMS was yet to submit its quarterly budgetary reports despite the fact that it was already nine months into the current financial year.
“As much as NMS is under the Office of the President, we are following the law as per the Deed of Transfer and County Allocation of Revenue Act (CARA), 2020.
NMS should therefore furnish the committee with a breakdown of the utilization of funds allocated to it for the current financial year,” noted Mbatia.
In the 2020/2021 financial year, NMS took over from City Hall and was allocated Ksh 27.1 billion to manage the functions of Health, Transport, Public Works, and Planning.
The budget committee further instructed the County Treasury and NMS to subsequently ensure that submitted budget estimates were categorized into their respective functions.
The County Treasury is expected to submit the annual budget estimates by April 30, 2021, together with a list of pending bills in the county.
This comes after Auditor General Nancy Gathungu asked that NMS be investigated over the irregular withdrawal of millions of shillings meant to help fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
"The management could not explain the basis of the facilitation, the authority to pay facilitation and expenditure could not be supported,” revealed the AG's report.
NMS, however, listed a number of projects justifying how the Ksh 294 million from the national government had been used.
