The frequent rationalisation of budgets is to blame for the huge pending bills in the Correctional Services department, lawmakers heard yesterday.

Correctional Services Principal Secretary Salome Muhia (left) told MPs that in the last financial year, the departments’ entire development budget was reduced from Sh1 billion to Sh40 million, making it hard for the ministry to run the docket. She regretted that the bills have been made worse by the cuts in the daily subsistence for inmates as their food allocation per day has been reduced from the Sh275 required to sustain them to Sh192.

The move, she says, has led to the increase of pending bills by a whopping Sh3 billion, which is currently undergoing verification from the relevant committee.

Muhia was appearing before the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to respond to audit queries for the financial year 2022/23.

Unfunded bills

According to a report by the office of the Auditor General for the 2022/2023 financial year, the department had accrued Sh6.8 billion in pending bills owed to suppliers of goods and services in the period under review. This had prompted the intervention of MPs who were considering the matter yesterday.

“The problem has been that once our budget is approved by Parliament, it is usually revised in the Supplementary estimates, meaning we are unable to meet our obligations,” the PS explained, adding that pending bills consisted of funded and unfunded bills totalling to Sh1.213 billion and Sh3,371,650.

The funded bills were verified and processed in the financial year but was not released by the National Treasury and no budgetary allocation was made in the current financial year 2024/2025. The amounts have since been submitted to the pending bills verification committee.

In her responses before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chaired by Butere MP Tindi Mwale, Muhia said there is need for the National Treasury to ring-fence its allocations to the department to avoid the bills from increasing.