Lenku tells Speaker to engage banks over delayed pay

Kajiado Governor Joseph Lenku has told Speaker Johnson Osoi to stop mourning about unpaid salaries and instead find a local solution the problem.

“Some counties made a local arrangement with banks so that they could pay their workers. The speaker should have done the same instead of lamenting in public,”  Lenku said.

Kajiado is one of the counties that have not paid their workers after the delay by the National Treasury to release money to counties due to a standoff between the Senate and the National Assembly.

Osoi had said on Thursday that operations of the county assembly have been paralysed because the staff had not been their July salaries.

“Governor Lenku did not involve us in planning his scorecard ceremony. I was invited in the last minute. I did not go. We cannot even move around because our cars have no fuel and insurance stickers,” he said.

He claimed the MCAs cannot move from their houses to the assembly and all operations cannot be attended to.

Lenku, who spoke on Friday at Dalalekutuk, denied splashing Sh22 million on his two-year scorecard day.

“We indeed paid local entertainers Sh100,000 but haters multiplied the same to Sh22 million. We made local arrangements for the tents as each department went out of their way to use the least resources for the occasion,” the governor said.

He accused those complaining of the expenditure of being malicious.

The occasion was attended by Council of Governors chairman Wycliffe Oparanya, who is the Kakamega governor.