County official regrets budget 'error'

A Bungoma County official has apologised for “accidental misplacement” of money as the governor’s entertainment allowance.

In a statement, Mr Paul Masinde (Finance), who is charged with preparing the county’s budget, said the amount appearing in the budget was erroneous.

“As Finance and Budget teams, we request for your understanding, it was an accidental misplacement that has already been corrected,” he said.

On Wednesday night, Governor Ken Lusaka could not defend proposals in the county budget when he appeared on a talk show on Citizen TV.

Trending topic

Mr Lusaka argued that the Sh53 million was for his office and not for him as an individual.

“It terms of priority, if you asked me, we have gotten it right. We had an input from all the stakeholders,” the governor said on the show.

The county's budget has now become a trending topic on social media.

One Ngunjiri Wambugu wrote on Twitter: “Governor Lusaka of Bungoma has Sh53m for entertainment; 30m for travel; in essence 83m total (6.3m per month) for entertaining & traveling ...”

Phillip Etale criticised the governor for getting priorities wrong. “Security is underfunded in the highly insecure Bungoma. Come on Governor Ken Lusaka. Reduce your entertainment allowance to give security,” he said.

Accidental misplacement

However, on Thursday, Mr Masinde said: “As the Minister of Finance who oversees the budget committee, we acknowledge that this was an error on our side.

“The Sh50, 000,000 was accidentally clustered with the governor’s entertainment budget of Sh3,500,000 putting the total figure to Sh53,000,000,” he added.

The overall amount was meant for all the county committees and boards as well as “catering services across all the departments.”

The county assembly had endorsed the Sh8.7 billion budget but the proposals caused an uproar as they indicated hefty allocations.

Sh1M for Speaker’s regalia

Recurrent expenditure hit 59 per cent of the total county budget. “When you talk about entertainment allowance for the whole financial year, you are not talking about the governor as a person, you are talking about the office of the governor, the executive and it has a lot of many other people.”

The county is expected to receive Sh5.9 billion from the National Treasury and is supposed to raise Sh2.7 billion on its own.

Reports indicate Sh112 million was allocated for vehicles, Sh1 million for the Speaker’s regalia and Sh57.2 million for entertainment allowances for the County Public Service Board.

Another Sh500, 000 was budgeted for the Deputy Governor, Sh3.2 million for county administrative section and Sh22 million for foreign travel.