Kitui Governor Charity Ngilu blamed the county assembly for the failure by her administration to pay June salaries for 7,400 workers.
She said MCAs rejected a supplementary budget on June 27 which could have e provided money to pay the county workers in time.
In the supplementary budget, the county executive had proposed the re-voting of development monies to pay salaries. But MCAs said it the proposal had illegalities and shot it down.
Even as Ngilu passed the buck to the assembly, speaker George Ndotto came out fighting. In a statement on Sunday, he said there was no justification to blame the assembly.
Quoting the law, Ndotto said MCAs did the right thing by rejecting the supplementary budget as it had illegalities.
“Section 154 of the PFMA, 2012 prohibits an accounting officer from authorising the transfer of an amount that is appropriated for capital expenditure except to defray other capital expenditure," Ndotto said in a statement to the media.
“In essence, the second supplementary budget had proposed reallocation of funds from development to recurrent expenditure which is illegal."
He said the supplementary budget had violated the legal provision that wages and benefits for its public officers should not exceed 35 per cent of any county government’s total revenue.
“Therefore, because of these two reasons, the assembly which is the custodian of law in the county cannot be expected to approve any supplementary budget prepared against the law. It is a illegality and it was thus rejected,” Ndotto said.
But Ngilu said the rejection of the supplementary budget was meant to punish her and the executive. As a result, she lamented that in the process other people and Kitui workers have become collateral damage.
The governor, however, said she is hopeful that the county executive will get money from the National Treasury, but she was not certain when the money would come.
(Edited by P. Wanambisi)
