Lenku's Sh100 million livestock offtake appeal sealed

Governor Joseph Lenku's hopes of having the county assembly approve his Sh100 million appeal for livestock offtake is shattered after MCAs took a long recess.

On Thursday, the MCAs took a break that will see them return mid-February.

This automatically dealt a big blow to Lenku's second appeal of the livestock offtake program.

Lenku, who has accused the MCAs of being heartless after they threw out his request, had hinted that he would go back to his alleged tormentors and appeal to them to re-look at his request for the Sh100 million.

But on Sunday, the assembly's ad hoc budget committee chairman, James Kuya (Kimana) said, "We have no business with the governor."

"We allocated the executive money to combat drought and in any case, some parts of the county have started receiving rains."

Kuya, who spoke to the Star on the phone said the assembly could not allocate funds without a policy guideline adding that what the governor was fronting is to break the law.

He reiterated what speaker Justus Ngossur had said when he lashed out at the executive for using the county assembly to rubber stamp corruption.

The Kimana MCA said ad hoc committees of the house will be meeting when necessary while the other MCAs will be away and made it clear that the matter of offtake as it is being pushed by Lenku is not on their agenda.

"We finished with Lenku as the county assembly. We have no agenda with him, anymore regarding his pet project, which we dismissed by the House," he said. 

"In all fairness, and in an act of open governance, transparency and accountability the committee on budget and appropriations invited two county executives on Finance and Agriculture."

Kuya said the executives were to advise and clarify on criteria, timeliness and guideline on the way the said livestock offtake fund Sh100 million will be utilised.

Unfortunately, the speaker said, the heads of the said departments could not convince the committee of the way the funds would be used without the guiding documents - this is against the PFM Act, 2012.

Lenku in his earlier statement had said: “It is shocking that our county assembly leadership and the budget committee did not see the value of helping us cushion our people from total losses of their livestock”

Last Tuesday, Lenku claimed the county assembly was hell bent on denying him money to compensate for 5,000 animals killed by drought.

"At least 5,000 animals would have been compensated to enable their owners to get something and be able to restock when the drought situation improves," he said.

"My government is disappointed that our assembly leadership and honourable members of the budget committee failed to stand with our suffering livestock farmers and fell for simplistic politics fueled by external forces."

Lenku told the Star that it is unfortunate that this livestock offtake money has been dropped from the supplementary budget at a time livestock continues to be lost in droves.

"I still strongly stand by the position that my government can spend Sh100 million to pay off for livestock most affected by the drought before they die," he said.