CoG dismisses claims of debts non-payment
By Eric Wainaina, January 8, 2020The Council of Governors (CoG) yesterday rubbished claims that counties had refused to clear pending bills,
Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya, who is the CoG chairman said that the issue had been blown out of proportion owing to the fact that each county has a unique way of dealing with their debts while some of the pending bills are under scrutiny.
He said Interior Cabinet secretary Fred Matiang’i had unnecessarily aggravated the situation after he warned that the government would “apply all lawful means to force counties to clear the bills.”
“The issues (alleged failure to pay), come out because new governors were refusing to honour old bills which they inherited from their predecessors,” the governor said in Nairobi during the unveiling of a panel to recruit a new Inter-governmental Relations Technical Committee, Oparanya said CoG was in agreement with the Controller of Budget that an audit should be conducted. The Auditor General who flagged most of the pending bills carried out the audit.
Supporting documents
“The report said some of the bills were ineligible and we agreed that a committee (to probe the pending bills) be formed at the county level and it happened because some of the pending bills did not have supporting documents, others had not followed the procurement process while others are subject of court cases after the suppliers sued the counties,” Oparanya added.
National Treasury acting Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani had in November sought parliament’s approval to deny at least 15 counties their equitable share of allocation should they fail to clear their pending bills in line with the presidential directive.
He told the MPs through a communication from National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi that his office was requesting for approval of stoppage of transfers of an equitable share of the revenue for the financial year 2019/2020 to County Governments.
Among the counties which as at October 28 owed suppliers include Migori (Sh970 million), Tharaka Nithi (Sh921 million), Bomet (Sh893 million), Kirinyaga (Sh1.05 billion), Nandi (Sh1.12 billion), Mombasa (Sh4.07 billion), Kiambu (Sh1.56 billion), Garissa (Sh1.57 billion) and Baringo (Sh35 million). Others are Narok Sh1.8 billion, Machakos (Sh1.1 billion), Nairobi (Sh21 billion), Vihiga (Sh1.8 billion), Isiolo (Sh1.09 billion), and Tana River (Sh1.09 billion).