- In a press statement on Thursday, the legislator said he was exercising his oversight mandate as provided for by law to protect the interests of the county.
- Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang'o’s report ranked Kiambu County the worst to do business with owing to highest pending bills.
Image: FILE
Kiambu Senator Karungo Thangwa has invited the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to probe alleged graft in the county.
In a press statement, the legislator said he was exercising his oversight mandate as provided for by law to protect the interests of the county.
“As EACC prepares to get into Kiambu, it’s good to know this is not politics. This is the work I was mandated to do by the people of Kiambu when I was voted for as senator and going in line with Article 96 of the Constitution,” he said.
Thangwa said among areas the anti-graft body should look into is the payroll which he claimed has not been automated leaving the manual system that is vulnerable to abuse to remain in use.
“In 2022-23 and up to today, the county has paid through manual payroll over Sh392 million. That is the amount that has been paid, to who? That is the question,” he said.
“I’m calling upon the EACC to not wait any longer because if you wait any longer, Kiambu is going to lose billions of shillings.”
Senator Thangwa said Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang'o’s report that Kiambu tops the list of worst county governments to do business with owing to the highest pending bills further lends credence to the invitation for EACC to probe financial practices in the county.
According to the report, the Kiambu county government has settled only Sh143.3 million in monies owed to suppliers out of an accumulated obligation of Sh3.36 billion in pending bills as of April 17, 2023.
This represents only four per cent of the verified unpaid bills.
The report released on February 26, ranked Nairobi as the second worst county to do business with having settled only Sh975.2 million out of Sh10.6 billion pending bills.
Nyeri, Siaya and Mandera were listed as the best counties to do business with.
Nyakang’o’s report indicates that in the first quarter of of2023-24, Kiambu had a pending bill of Sh5.62 billion as of September 30, 2023, despite having a bank balance of Sh1.14 billion in the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
Thangwa claimed that during the 2022-23 financial year, the county government returned to the National Treasury about Sh2 billion despite having Sh5.2 billion in unpaid pending bills.
The senator said under the prevailing circumstances, Kiambu runs the risk of never clearing pending bills due to a huge deficit in hitting the targets in its own revenue collection.
“The County Government of Kiambu through the county assembly passed a budget of Sh7 billion of own-source revenue. So they were supposed to collect around Sh7 billion by June this year. As we speak today, the county has collected only Sh1.6 billion," he said.
“We have another six months remaining, if you look at that trajectory, they will collect another Sh1.6 billion, so that means they might collect Sh3.2 billion a deficit from a total amount of Sh7 billion and the county government has already committed Sh7 billion so that means this issue of pending bills will never end in Kiambu.”