Uasin Gishu Health executive Evelyn Rotich is facing impeachment over accusations of arrogance, incompetence and mismanagement.
Rotich was on Thursday grilled by MCAs following a petition filed by health professionals. The petitioners accuse Rotich of incompetence, staff mismanagement and arrogance.
She appeared before the Health committee chaired by Hosea Some.
Rotich also faces accusations of harassing and intimidating health workers and underperformance.
“The accusations are not true and I have been working as required. In fact, I have no problem with the employees in my docket," Rotich told MCAs.
Some said the committee will deliberate on the accusations against Rotich and table its recommendations before the assembly for members to decide what action to take.
The petition came amid similar claims against executives in Nandi and Elgeyo Marakwet. The executives are accused of nonperformance and overseeing corruption in their dockets.
Nandi Governor Stephen Sang said he will not allow MCAs to impeach his executives and chief officers over claims of incompetence and graft.
Sang admitted the MCAs had planned to impeach majority of his ministers and compel him to sack senior staff. Sang said the issues raised by the MCAs do not meet the threshold for impeachment.
“As much as the MCAs are within their mandate to sanction the executives, none of my officers will be impeached at the end of the day because there are no tangible issues against them,” Sang said.
He denied claims he was using the MCAs to cause the sacking of some of the executives in order to avoid blame.
“As governor, I don’t need to go through the county assembly to send home the executives. In fact, a governor does not need a procedure to sack county executives,” Sang told the Star on phone on Thursday.
He said what was going on in Nandi was the usual small fights between MCAs and executives and promised to have the differences sorted out.
Nandi MCAs have started the process to sack Education executive Valentine Chumo and her Finance counterpart Alfred Lagat over claims of incompetence and corruption.
Three senior officers including two chief officers for Finance and Planning and the head of the county supply chain have been suspended over the same allegations. The assembly passed a motion to have them sacked.
The MCAs are also targeting executives for Public Administration, Trade and Lands for impeachment.
Sang has denied claims of corruption in his administration. “There are many fake stories and propaganda aimed at justifying the flawed processes being carried out in the county assembly,” Sang said.
Chumo went to court to block her sacking, saying she was innocent.
Edited by P. Obuya
