The Controller of Budget has raised a number of serious issues regarding the management of resources at Nairobi City County.
According to CoB Margaret Nyakang’o,the county’s treasury has been issuing contradicting reports and consistently failed to avail information on the county’s commercial banks.
The CoB report for the first six months of FY 2023/24, shows that the county incurred Kshs.465.04 million on development programmes, representing a decrease of 49.9 per cent compared to a similar period of FY 2022/23 when the County spent Kshs.927.33 million.
This is even as pressure mounts on Governor Sakaja to explain how he only spent 3 percent of monies approved on development out of the Kshs10.81 billion on development and recurrent programmes in the reporting period.
Expenditure on development programmes represented an absorption rate of 3.3 per cent, while recurrent expenditure represented 36.6 per cent of the annual recurrent expenditure budget.
“Report on programmes and sub-programmes does not tally with the other reports submitted by the County Treasury, especially on actual expenditure. The County Treasury should ensure the IFMIS reports are reconciled to improve budget credibility,” the CoB stated.
Shockingly,the county’s development only captured three departmnets and this includes the construction of 10 centralized kitchens and 100 serving sheds in schools whose contract some is Ksh 324,954,236 with Ksh 198,995,725 having been paid.
The County also claimed to have constructed the Dandora Stadium on a contract cost Ksh 276,000,000 million with Ksh 34,533,882million having been paid. The stadium was initially almost complete during the regime of former Governor Mike Sonko.
This means the county only used Ksh233,529,607million on developemt in the first 6 months given Ksh 227,967,900 million was funding from the Road Maintenance Fuel Levy grant which was not refunded to the CRF at the end of the financial year.
The County has been on the spot for using most of its resources to pay ghost suppliers in the legal and Solid Waste departments.
Despite this, the CoB stated that there is still a High level of pending bills which amounted to Kshs.106.88 billion as of 31st December 2023. Coupled with the lack of a concrete strategy/approach for settling pending bills.
Sakaja was also called out for the underperformance of own-source revenue at Kshs.3.81 billion against an annual projection of Kshs.19.99 billion, representing 19.1 per cent of the annual target.
At least Kshs.1.01 billion was processed through the manual payroll, accounting for 13.5 per cent of the total payroll cost .The Government requires that salaries be processed through the IPPD system
“The manual payroll is prone to abuse and may lead to the loss of public funds where there is a lack of proper controls,” the report stated
It is suspected that senior officials are diverting million through the manual payroll that is hard to account for.
“The Government requires that salaries be processed through the IPPD system, and the County is advised to fast-track the acquisition of Unified Personnel Numbers for their staff. The County Public Service Board should regulate staff engagement on contract and casual workers as provided under Section 74 of the County Governments Act 2012. Further, there should be strict compliance with the approved staff establishment,” the CoB said.
The County’s Finanace Executive Charles Kerich, Chief Officer in charge of Finance, Asha Abdi, and some accountants are the biggest culprits reportedly working under the instructions of Governor Sakaja.
Chief Officer in charge of Finance, Asha Abdi, has been introduced as additional signatories to the same accounts.
The County Executive led by Sakaja used Ksh 475.06 million for domestic travel, Ksh 115. 65 million for foreign travel making traveling expenditure alone bigger than the amount used for development.
The County used Ksh 60 million on hospitality supplies ,Ksh 47 million in training expenses,another Ksh 41 million in specialized supplies and Ksh 10 million in communication supplies.
A breakdown of the foreign travel indicates the Governor and his executive used Ksh 8,993,450 million on a personal branding and people professional summit ,Ksh 8,782,764 million to attend the 8th United Nations General Assembly Summit in New York,unexplained trip to Canada costing Ksh 6 ,761,520, per diem for a conference in Switzerland costing Ksh 5,368,497 and a Japan trip that cost Ksh 5,080,800 million
Several county staff are being investigated for various offenses and they include, Kevin Musamia, Vivian Mavua, Ambrose Musau, Vivian Mavua, Beth Muthoni, Denis Muia, Brian Oyando, live high end lifestyle, with state-of-the-art-houses and nice looking cars.
There is also Stephen Mafura, Mary Maina Wangui, Peter Gitau from procurement, untouchable Caroline Mwangi who normally calls shorts at assembly leadership.
Another scenario is whereby some junior county staff with the likes of Charles Onyango Masella who work at the public service board in IT section is chewing ladies with corrupt earned money, he has bought an Mpesa lady identified as Margret Nguyo a red car and bought her Sh 200k phone.
Kevin Musamia who was employed as a clerical officer but has grown to be an untouchable cartel and tenderpreneur at City Hall.
The lady among others have an Mpesa opposite Jubilee insurance.
The alleged cityhall slay queen Margret Nguyo who operates an Mpesa shop at Cityhall
Investigative authorities are also investigating some companies that were recently paid without due processes.
The list of companies in our possession are said to have delivered nothing at the county and were paid huge amount of money.
