The Controller of Budget, Margaret Nyakang’o, has revealed how counties and MCAs spent billions of shillings on sitting allowances and travel.

In her report, Nyakang’o has also exposed counties for wrongful use of resources as millions of shillings have been spent on non-priority items such as garbage, legal fees, arbitrations and payments of salaries.

A schedule of the destinations the MCAs and county executive officers visited shows that they preferred countries and cities such as Tanzania, Kampala, Singapore, Dubai, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Canada, the UK, Singapore, Egypt, Qatar, and Spain for benchmarking and training.

The third quarterly National Government Budget Implementation Review Report for the Financial Year 2024/25 shows that MCAs spent a whopping Ksh1.08 billion on sitting allowances against an approved budget of Ksh1.96 billion.

This expenditure translates to 55 per cent of the approved MCA sitting allowance budget, an increase from 54 per cent in the first nine months of FY 2023/24.

The County Assemblies with the highest absorption rates for their sitting allowance budgets included Vihiga at 117 per cent, Wajir County Assembly (100 per cent), and Nandi and Nairobi County Assemblies, at 99 per cent.

The further shows that counties with the lowest development budgets include Kisumu at 10 per cent, Lamu at 13 per cent, Taita-Taveta County (14 per cent), Embu County (16 per cent), Nairobi County (17 per cent) and Nyeri and Baringo counties at 18 per cent while Kajiado and Kisii counties had an absorption rate of 19 per cent.

The counties that had the highest absorption rate for development expenditures include Busia at 45 per cent, followed by Garissa and Mandera at 41 per cent and Narok at 39 per cent.

In total, counties spent an aggregate of Ksh229.62 billion, or 80 per cent of the total expenditure, on recurrent activities, representing 61 per cent of the annual County Government’s budget for recurrent activities.

In the case of counties, for instance, Nairobi County spent Ksh27.34 million on committee sitting allowances for the 124 MCAs against the annual budget allocation of Ksh27.56 million, as each MCA is entitled to a monthly sitting allowance of Ksh24,494.