The county government of Kitui is unable to pay its 7,400 staff June salaries until further notice.
Acting county secretary Alex Kimanzi says the problem has been occasioned by last week’s rejection of a supplementary budget by Kitui assembly in which recurrent expenses were factored.
"The assembly session on June 27 did not approve the supplementary budget. As a result, there will be an unusual delay in the payment of salaries and wages for the month of June 2019,” Kimanzi said in a letter to all chief officers dated July 4.
“Please urge the staff to appreciate this challenge we are facing and remain patient as we endeavour to find a solution to the matter."
As they shot down the supplementary budget, the MCAs insisted it contained illegalities and they would not approve of it. The MCAs were unanimous in the rejection saying the law prohibits the transfer of development money to pay salaries or other emoluments.
The executive had asked the assembly to reallocate more fund for salaries after a shortfall occasioned by Sh498 million tax arrears from 2013 to 2017.
The tax arrears cover the period before the current Governor Charity Ngilu took office in August 2017.
The executive had requested the assembly to accommodate the salary shortfall of Sh240 million occasioned by tax liability but MCAs shot down the budget.
“The county budgeted enough money for payment of salaries at the beginning of the financial year but unfortunately had to pay a KRA liability accruing from nonpayment of the right amount of taxes for the period 2013 to 2017 whose tax assessment was delivered to the county in April 2019,” Justice Kali, economic chief officer, said in a statement.
The MCAs on Friday shot down the supplementary budget unaware that among the items in the proposal was to regularize the money 35 MCAs spent on travel to Singapore, UAE, Canada and Malaysia.
The finance executive in May allowed the clerk of the assembly to facilitate the MCAs who had been scheduled to travel for foreign trips on condition that the same is regularized in the supplementary budget.
