• Residents had rejected it during public participation at the chambers on Monday
• Subscription to an international organisation was scaled up to Sh5,440,000
The Kiambu County Assembly has passed a supplementary budget that has National Assembly vote heads.
The MCAs passed the controversial Sh16.9 billion budget on Wednesday despite residents rejecting it during public participation at the chambers on Monday.
The residents felt that the budget was unnecessary since in two weeks the assembly will have one for the financial year 2019/2022.
The supplementary budget was received on May 9 and approved by the speaker with vote head "Basic Salaries National Assembly". The approved vote head of Sh116 million was not included in the supplementary budget report tabled by Kiuu Ward MCA Daniel Ngugi. He is head of the budget and appropriations committee.
The only proposals under the office of assembly clerk from the budget report tabled were deductions of monies under remunerations of instructors and contract based training services, field training attachments, legal fees and temporary committee expenses.
Another vote head under basic salaries of Members of Parliament (Sh250 million) was passed. The approved National Assembly attendance allowance was revised downwards from Sh100 million to Sh74 million and passed.
Under financial management and administration in the office of the assembly clerk, there was a vote head for purchase of police uniforms which was allocated Sh2.5 million and approved.
There were membership fee and dues and subscription to an international organisation which was estimated at Sh5 million and scaled up to Sh5,440,000. Contribution to Commonwealth Parliamentary Association was Sh500,000. A similar contribution was made to the African Parliamentary Association while other parliamentary associations were allocated Sh4.44 million from Sh4 million.
Ikinu Ward representative Stanley Wanjiku said that if the vote heads were not in the report of the select committee on the budget passed by the assembly, the vote heads from the National Parliament stand as passed. The vote heads were not in the supplementary report.
Leader of the majority Anthony Ikonya confirmed the anomalies, attributing them to the templates they have been using.
Governor Ferdinand Waititu was at the beginning of this month grilled by the Senate committee over the Auditor General’s report in which his county allocated Sh180 million to Administration of Statutory benefits for retired presidents, Sh973 million to the coordination of State House functions, and Sh591 million to state corporations advisory service.
The county government also had allocated Sh58 million to Kenya-South Sudan peacekeeping mission and Sh804 million to Free Primary Education.
Ngugi told the assembly that the report was compiled having considered and reviewed the supplementary estimates and taking into account the views of CEC member in charge of finance, the sectoral committee, and the public.
“The county treasury has largely adhered to most of the legal provisions while submitting the supplementary estimates which have been occasioned by factors of pending bills, exhaustion of the budget under alcoholic drinks fund, comprehensive NHIF cover for county staff, conditional allocation from the World Bank and unspent balance from 2017/18 financial years,” he said.
Ngugi said that in the recurrent expenditure the treasurer proposed an increase of Sh11,119,365,158 from Sh9,595,652,954 to facilitate Sh722 million for support of the county government policy of rehabilitating alcohol addicts popularly known as Kaa Sober programme, Sh96 million for wages for enforcement officer and Sh540 for wages of casual workers.
This has not gone well with residents. “The Sh1.5 billion is said to pay Kaa Sober alcoholics whereas the enforcement officers are involved in the programme to harass bar owners and stealing from the bars. Casual workers are the same people in the alcoholic programme. This is daylight robbery and the MCAs have passed this,” complained Eric Mutura.
The supplementary budget report had proposed a decrease in development expenditure from Sh6,027,430,240 to Sh5,794,987,229 because development budget is greatly neutralised by conditional grants from donor-funded projects and unspent revenues.
Earlier, 10 MCAs in the finance and budget committee rejected the tabling of the budget citing unexplained concerns by the county executive over spent but unaccounted for monies.
This split the committee into two and created a finance committee and a budget committee with the 10 MCAs being kicked out of the committees. The supplementary budget was tabled and passed despite the opposition.
The 10, however, went to court and challenged the supplementary budget and the High Court ruled in their favour.