Agency under pressure to pay Savula bill, official tells court
By Alphonce Mungahu Kenya, September 14, 2023
Former Government Advertising Agency employee has told a Nairobi court that there was a lot of pressure from media to pay pending bills while the agency had insufficient funding.
Patrick Ngichuru who was the chief finance officer in the Ministry of ICT confirmed payments done by GAA followed due process and every incurred expense was above board.
Gichuru told Milimani Chief Magistrate Lucas Onyina GAA incurred expenses because of low funding but the pending bills were solved when the Treasury added Sh700m to sort out pending bills.
“The problem of GAA having pending bills was because the Treasury had not disbursed funds to the agency. Pressure from media outlets led to the arrest of the accused persons and there was no money that was stolen,” he said.
He added that there was inadequate allocation of funds to GAA for the previous years from the 2015 to 2018 financial year leading to a backlog of the bills.
Pending advertisers bills
Ngichuru was testifying in a case where Kakamega Deputy Governor Ayub Savula is charged alongside former ICT PS Sammy Itemere for stealing Sh122 million that was meant for paying pending bills to advertisers.
In his testimony, the witness told court that the total financial budget allocation for GAA from 2015/2016 was Sh408,047,53, for 2016/2017 it was Sh492,895,796, 2017/2018 was Sh492,893 and for 2018/2019 it was Sh1,385,350,000.
Transferred to new post
He stated that he succeeded Sephano Ombachi who was transferred to the Ministry of Health.
Before payment, he said the accounts department have to examine the payment vouchers for authenticity documents attached on the vouchers if they are genuine.
“I recall in the month of July 2018 I saw in the newspaper that the Ministry of ICT had not paid the media houses to the tune of Sh2.5 billion. The department of GAA is the one that was said to have paid the media houses. I asked the Director of the advertising Agency Albert Gituku about it who told me it was true as they had no money to pay”, he said.