By The Weekly Vision
Members of the Nairobi City County Assembly (MCA’s) are under surveillance by the Auditor General over claims that they approved payments for joyriders during a retreat to Mombasa. The MCAs are known to make the trips alongside their drivers, secretaries and other City Hall staff who despite travelling to Mombasa and getting paid per diem, have no business to transact during those retreats.
The big question is, why would a cleaner or messengers at City Hall be attending a finance and budget committee retreat in Mombasa? Do they have the expertise to participate in deliberations on matters of finance? The answer is an emphatic no! How the County Assembly picks and decides who attends which retreat has been occasioned by a report which revealed that the assembly spent Ksh. 13,285,600 on Members of County Assembly (MCAs) retreat allowances in Mombasa between 1st to 5th October 2020.
The purpose of the retreat was refresher training on County Assembly rules and procedures and to review the work of MCAs. A review of memos approving the retreat revealed that an additional 35 officers were included in addition to directors, principal officers, and personal aides, accompanying the MCAs.
The number was relatively high, and no justification was provided for the additional personnel who travelled including their roles in the retreat. Consequently, the validity and value for money of expenditure amounting to Ksh. 13,285,600 incurred in respect of the retreat could not be confirmed.
There has also been questionable expenditure by the Assembly’s legal department. The assembly paid Ksh.79,026,985 in respect of legal expenses paid to various law firms who represented the County Assembly in various legal matters during the year. Investigations however reveal that a summary of cases handled by the private lawyers from the Legal Department revealed that in some of the cases, the Assembly was represented by up to four lawyers in a single matter while in most of the cases, at least two lawyers were handling a single matter. In addition, some of the cases lacked formal instructions to the lawyers to represent the County Assembly casting doubt on their validity.
