The controller in a report says the assembly declared it had accrued Sh200 million worth of pending bills but it is not clear what became of it. It said no documents were supplied at the time of reporting as to whether the money was paid or not.
“At the beginning of 2022-23, the county assembly reported pending bills amounting to Sh200.44 million, which comprised Sh176.18 million and Sh13.86 million for recurrent and development expenditures respectively,” the report said.
“However, the assembly did not report any expenditure towards settling pending bills in the period under review.”
The report said that according to the Special Audit Report of the Auditor General, the stock of pending bills for the year ending June 30, 2020 totalled Sh85.72 billion, which was consolidated for recurrent and development activities for the whole county, including the executive.
However, during the period under review, the county treasury did not provide a report on the settlement of pending bills, it said.
The outstanding pending bills reported by the county executive to Nyakangó’s office was Sh100.16 billion as of December 31, 2022.
The report also shows that the assembly is the one leading in gobbling up the county’s revenue in travel expenses.
During the period under review, it said, expenditure on domestic travel amounted to Sh86.63 million for the whole county, but the assembly took the lion's share of it Sh59.05 million.
The travel expense by the Governor Johnson Sakaja-led executive was Sh27.58 million in the half-year review.
However, the executive is leading in taking up much of the foreign trips, taking up much of the international trips vote.
“Expenditure on foreign travel amounted to Sh31.70 million and comprised of Sh1 million by the county assembly and Sh30.70 million by the county executive,” the report says.
In terms of personnel emoluments on recurrent expenses, the report says the assembly has spent Sh12.88 million on committee sitting allowances for the 124 MCAs and the speaker against the annual budget allocation of Sh68.21 million.
The average monthly sitting allowance is Sh17,308 per MCA. The county assembly has established 26 committees.
Overall, the county, including executive and assembly, has spent Sh7.08 billion, or 83.0 per cent of the revenue for the first half of 2022-23 on employee compensation. Total revenue for the first half of the year is indicated as Sh11.55 billion.
“This expenditure remained at Sh7.08 billion as reported in a similar period in 2021-22. The wage bill included Sh3.09 billion paid to health sector employees, translating to 43.7 per cent of the total wage bill,” the report says.
The report also says that the Sakaja administration has not spent a cent on development and that the road works it has undertaken or initiated are funded by conditional grants from the the Kenya Roads Board that gives money on maintenance.
“In the first half of FY 2022-23, the county did not incur expenditure on development programmes. The amount of Sh927.33 million reported as development expenditure is a Conditional Grant from Kenya Roads Board (KRB) as Road Maintenance Levy Fund (RMLF) which is to be expensed from Special Purpose Account.”
