Governors accuse government of denying them access to funds

Governors have accused the national government of denying them access to funds for county projects in a bid to undermine their leadership and ensure they are rejected in next year’s elections.

A scheme “perpetrated through technology” was being used as an excuse to deny them additional funds in an election year, a move aimed at denting governors’ political careers, Council of Governors Chairman Peter Munya said on Monday.

The scheme was being perpetrated at the Treasury using the Integrated Management Information System (Ifmis), which, he alleged, counties were allowed to access for only 15 minutes in a day. This is hardly enough time for them to make transactions, he said.

“There has always been the fear that the government would want to sabotage counties so that at the end of the financial year, they can use the excuse of counties having billions in unused funds not to increase the allocations in an election year so as to undermine county leadership,” he said.

Mr Munya also called for an audit of the Ifmis by the Auditor-General, to establish whether it was prudent to continue using the online system or abandon it.

Mr Munya, however, did not state how many counties had been affected by the funding drought. He said some, such as Lamu, were hardly operating due to limited access to the electronic system, which was introduced in public finance management to reduce corruption.

ALWAYS RESISTED

Although the county bosses have always resisted Ifmis, their fears appear to be mounting as 2017 elections approach, with Mr Munya stating that the “manipulation of the system to ensure counties did not access funds was bound to be pronounced as the country moves closer to the elections”.

Mr Munya, who spoke at a press briefing in Nairobi, is one of the governors in the Jubilee zone, to have rubbed the government up the wrong way by resisting a move to merge the ruling coalition’s affiliate parties into the recently launched Jubilee Party.

The alleged sabotage of projects in affected governors’ counties is being viewed as a move to punish them in the elections.

Mr Munya, who is also the Meru governor, cited the failure of Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich to convene a meeting of a technical committee, agreed on by the Summit, to look into some of the financial concerns of counties, “two weeks after the decision was made’ as part of this grand scheme.

He said some of these grievances would be discussed at a meeting between the governors and Deputy President William Ruto at the Inter-governmental Budget and Economic meeting in Karen, Nairobi on Wednesday.