Busia MCAs threaten to impeach Ojaamong in ward fund row

Members of the Busia County Assembly have threatened to impeach their governor, Sospeter Ojaamong, for failure to allocate funds and clear the pending Bills related to ward development fund.

The ward reps who staged a walkout during a bonding session between them and the county executive at Tom Mboya Labour College in Kisumu forced the management to cut short the meeting which was to last a week.

Governor Ojaamong termed as unfortunate, the conduct of the leaders, accusing them of relying on unverified information.

“We cannot continue sitting here and spending public resources while the MCAs have decided to walk out,” he said.

The MCAs led by Deputy Speaker Lawrence Murunga accused the executive of failing to explain where the funds meant for implementing ward projects, under the Ward Development Fund, and bursaries have gone.

“It is not going to be business as usual from now going forward. We will go for whoever is sleeping on his job before members of the public persecute us,” he said.

While indicating that it was their right to remove him from office, Mr Ojaamong, however, said he was ready to defend himself against any allegations.

“It is their right to take any kind of action they deem fit but it has to pass through other bodies like the Senate who will independently verify their claims,” he said.

The governor termed the defiance as a big loss for the MCAs who were supposed to fine tune the supplementary budget before it is taken to the County Assembly for discussion and adoption.

“The executive wanted to factor in the input of the MCAs but now we are forced to hand it over as it is. This will restrict their contribution as they can only change about 10 percent of the content,” he said.

Majority Leader Laban Wanjala pointed out that the debt for Busia County has grown to over Sh3 billion while funds have already been dispatched by the National Government.

“We were involved in the preparation of a supplementary budget for 2016/2017 but the implementation progress is only 5 percent,” he said.

In a four-agenda memorandum presented to the executive, the MCAs called on the county government to present a report and finish ward-based projects in three months.

They accused the county government of failing to account for Sh553 million issued by the World Bank as devolution support programme grant and diverting it to ongoing projects.

“We have given the education department one week to clear pending bursaries which date back to 2016/2017, “he said.