Taita Taveta Senator Jones Mwaruma has urged the county government to prioritise paying pending bills before initiating new projects.
He said the accumulating debt is a threat to the county’s development plan, pointing out that residents might not fully benefit from devolution if debts remain unmanaged.
Speaking on Sunday, the legislator said late release of money by the national exchequer to the county governments had contributed to the growing debt.
He, however, urged Governor Granton Samboja's administration to focus on doing supplementary budgets to enable them to spend the funds released past the financial year.
“A government with a good debt management strategy should use the first supplementary budget to defray all pending bills.
“Pending bills should form the first charge on county funds in the subsequent year. There are counties with pending bills of Sh15 million but our county has hundreds of millions of pending bills,” Mwaruma said.
During his state-of-the-county address in February, Governor Samboja admitted that the county had been unable to settle a debt of over Sh217 million on time.
However, he said his administration would allocate at least Sh150 million this financial year to cater for the pending bills, which he said derail development.
“Despite making major strides in revenue collection, pending bills are still posing a challenge in the running of my administration,” Samboja said.
He said the county government had accrued eligible pending bills of Sh652 million, of which Sh436 million was paid to suppliers, resulting in the unpaid balance of Sh217 million as of June last year.
Mwaruma now advises the county government to procure goods and services only after receiving money from the National Treasury.
“The question that begs for answers is how possible it is to procure when funds are not available. There may be no challenge in payment when funds become available. After all, pending bills exist, some dating back to 2017,” he said.
Counties have not received funds since January, striking a blow at their efforts to pay salaries, implement development projects and fight the coronavirus.
In Taita Taveta, staffers have yet to receive their January pay as the county has found itself in a cash crisis.
The counties have yet to get Sh85.2 billion, two months to the end of the financial year. Of the stated amounts, Sh7.2 billion is owed to 12 counties for December.
However, Sh78 billion is owed to the 47 counties for January, February and March—each month at Sh26 billion for every devolved unit.
“There is a very important question that needs to be answered which has got to do with late disbursement of county funds from the Treasury and its effect on actualisation of development projects and programmes,” Mwaruma said.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
