Isiolo MCAs reject budget, call for probe on county officials

Isiolo assembly has rejected the Sh3.7 billion supplementary budget over ‘excess’ pending bills, impropriety of funds and failure to meet the budget making requirements.

About 15 MCAs present in the house supported recommendations by the Finance, Budget and Appropriation Committee that the Ethics and Anti Corruption Commission (EACC) should probe impropriety of funds in the process of budget implementation by some County officials.

The anti-graft team was further asked to interrogate and conduct a special audit on the county expenditure and project implementation by the Public Investments and Accounts Committee (PIC/PAC), citing that no project was implemented since 2016 despite huge allocations.

CONCERN

Finance, Budget and Appropriation Committee Chairperson Abdi Sora said observations made during an interrogation of county officials regarding the 2015/2016 supplementary budget indicates that the county government had huge pending bills.

They resolved to re-appropriate funds for development programmes in that financial year to clear all pending bills to avoid its sprawling effects on future budgets.

MCAs who rejected the supplementary budget recommended that the County Treasury re-do the estimates and control the excess pending bills that they claimed had negated the achievement of budget objectives for the past two years.

The Treasury was further asked to justify the alteration of Procurement plans that necessitated the payment of pending bills without approval of the assembly.

HUGE PENDING BILLS

All the seven sectors including Finance, Roads, Water, Health, Education, Tourism and Trade had pending bills amounting to Sh243 million.

“To the committee’s surprise, the office of Governor Godana Doyo which had a good absorption rate of the previous year’s budget presented a list of pending bills amounting to Sh277 million,” said Mr Sora while presenting a report on the estimates.

Mr Sora regretted that the committee was told that the county treasury abrogated itself the sole responsibility of preparing the supplementary budget with exclusion of other sector accounting officers as provided in the law.

Several chief officers in their oral submission denounced the budget as it conflicted with their proposals while others denied participating in the budget making process.

STOP FUNDS WITHDRAWALS

The MCAs further recommended that the Controller of Budget should cease authorisations of withdrawal of funds from county revenue funds outside Appropriation Act approved by the assembly.

The Committee called on the Auditor General to conduct special audit of the budget implementation for the 2016/ 2017 financial year to ascertain whether there is impropriety of public funds and establish offences to constitute legal proceedings.

Deputy Speaker David Lemantile argued that the executive had completely disregarded the role of the assembly in the management of public resources.

He cited that the members failed to approve the estimates since some departments introduced new programmes which do not qualify to be considered under supplementary budget.

The worst hit departments were Roads, Tourism, Social Services and Culture and Water and Irrigation.

OVERSPENDING

The new programmes include payment of casual employees, payment of pending bills and motor vehicle insurance.

The MCAs faulted chief officers who are the accounting personnel in their respective departments for overspending unnecessarily through payment of pending bills without approval, urging the Finance executive Aisha Abdi to act on them immediately.

Nominated MCA for Youth Benjamin Lopetet argued that the executive is subjecting future generations to debts unnecessarily without tangible long term projects.

“The executive has failed the county, we have an allocation of Sh3.7 billion every year but there is no tangible development we can boast of,” said Bulla Pesa MCA Moses Kithinji.

NON-EXISTING BILLS

The supplementary budget meant to regularize expenditure outside appropriation Act where there were insufficient funds amounts to Sh3.7 billion, with Sh2.3 billion being allocated to recurrent expenditure and Sh1.4 billion for development.

Mr Sora expressed concern with there is an increased amount of Sh17 million in the supplementary budget over the approved budget without justification.

“The Supplementary budget increased recurrent expenditure by Sh84million while reducing development expenditure by Sh67 million. EACC should investigate the matter since some county officials are flouting procedures on use of public funds,” he said.

He said 20 per cent of the supplementary estimates have been used to settle ‘non-existing’ bills.