National Youth Service will settle all debts it owes suppliers by the end of this month, director general Matilda Sakwa has said.
Sakwa said the Treasury has released Sh3.5 billion towards paying all the bills by the end of this financial year, which is Sunday.
She, however, maintained that NYS will only pay genuine suppliers, whose supplies had no queries.
“It should go on record that we are paying only those claims that were passed by the multi-agency committee on pending bills, which Ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender Affairs PS Safina Tsungu put in place,” Sakwa told the Star on the phone yesterday.
She said President Uhuru Kenyatta had directed that only suppliers without audit queries should have their debts settled by the National Youth Service.
Sakwa said there are many purported suppliers who claim NYS owes them a total of Sh9 billion.
She was reacting to the suppliers’ claims that the institution had delayed settling their debts. Some of those who claim NYS owes them millions of shillings on Tuesday camped at the parastatal’s headquarters in Nairobi demanding payments.
Sakwa confirmed that the ‘suppliers’ went to NYS headquarters in numbers but were addressed by "one of my senior officers and left". She was not in the institution at the time.
“The committee cleared claims worth Sh3.5 billion and that is what the Treasury released. For the rest, we can start asking questions later,” she said.
“Only supplies amounting to Sh3.5 billion didn’t have any issue and their suppliers will be paid by close of the financial year as per the Treasury.”
She said the payments being processed include Sh1.1 billion for cohorts (youth who did some work during Youth Empowerment Programme – YEP) and Sh300,000 for Huduma kitchen.
Sakwa said the supplies with audit queries won’t be paid because some do not have supporting documents that the said goods and services were supplied, were delivered outside the contract period, while other had been inflated.
