Details have emerged that Stanley Kamanguya, the Director of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) at Treasury, knew about the ridiculous budget allocations in counties in 2018.
The Standard has established that Laikipia County was the first to highlight the anomalies in the audit reports and even wrote a letter to Treasury.
In the letter dated January 11, 2018, Laikipia wrote to the IFMIS director to protest that a pullout on budget execution, from July to December 2018, indicated figures that did not relate to the county.
“Further, some of the programmes and sub-programmes do not have narratives despite having some huge figures in them. This implies that the pullout is not reliable, realistic and relevant to the county,” read the correspondence from Paul Njenga, the Laikipia County Finance and Economic Planning Chief Officer.
Njenga requested that Treasury reconciles the report so as to match the actual expenditure the county had incurred and even sent another reminder on August 16, 2018.
The Director responded on February 22, 2019, through a letter in which he acknowledged the errors.
“After review of your report, we noted there was a configuration issue under Laikipia County in the system resulting in the errors in the reports. This has since been rectified. Please find the attached copies of the trial balance and vote book reports for the affected vote for your confirmation. Please note that the unaccounted transactions in the system should be cleared by your officers,” Kamanguya wrote.
Speaking to The Standard about the new revelations affecting other counties among them Kiambu, Kitui, Nyeri and Kakamega, the Treasury insider stated that CS Henry Rotich was handling the matter.
The suspicious budget allocations have alarmed the Council of Governors whose members have distanced themselves from the figure in the audit reports.
CoG Chairman, Wycliffe Oparanya, revealed that the council had concluded Treasury had secretly added some items in the counties' IFMIS accounts.
“Since the county governments did not use the money stated in the erroneous report, who spent it? Is someone somewhere looting counties' funds through doctored entries?” Oparanya posed.
In defense, Treasury PS Kamau Thugge stated that it was the duty of the counties to ensure that budgets were prepared and captured accurately.
"We will not be intimidated into apologizing over an issue that was caused by pure negligence on the part of the governors," he asserted.
