By The Weekly Vision
County Assemblies across the country are expected to present their budgets to the public before being tabled to the respective County Assemblies for approval. The spotlight is now on Kisumu County as it has been discovered that the same did not happen during the passing of the 2021/2022 budget, a case of non-compliance with the Law on Budget Allocation to the County Assembly.
The County Assembly of Kisumu had an approved budget of Ksh. 738,793,294 which is equivalent to 7.25% of the total revenue of the County Executive of Ksh. 10,176,279,174. This is contrary to Regulation 25(1) (f) of the Public Finance Management (County Governments) Regulations, 2015, which states that the approved expenditure of a County Assembly shall not exceed 7% cent of the total revenue of the county government or twice the personnel emoluments of that County Assembly, whichever is lower. In the circumstances, Management was in breach of the law.
The executive has also been accused of doing business with handpicked firms which are not pre-qualified to offer services to the county government. The procurement department has been accused of doing business with certain hotels yet they are not on the list of pre-qualified vendors. It has been discovered that Ksh.2, 228,983 which relates to boards, committees, conferences and seminars paid to two local hotels which were not prequalified.
The management has been challenged to table tender documents and signed attendance lists to prove that the two hotels were genuinely warded with the tenders and that the said meetings indeed took place. Investigations further reflect County Own Generated Receipts of Ksh.1, 248,063,960. However, the Revenue Collection Account had Ksh. 72,224,115 collected but not transferred to the County Revenue Fund account and no reason was provided for the non-remittance. In the circumstances, the propriety of the unbanked revenue could not be confirmed.
