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{
"id": 1545935,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1545935/?format=api",
"text_counter": 38,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 13162,
"legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
"slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
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"content": "Sometimes, the county governments cannot tell you what the exact pending bill is because they have set up task forces, which review the work of previous task forces. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, according to the reports of the Auditor-General, pending bills increased from Kshs163 billion in the prior year to Kshs179 billion in this financial year. Nairobi City County leads the pack with pending bills worth Kshs118 billion and Kiambu County follows with Kshs6.3 billion. Mombasa County has Kshs4.4 billion, Machakos County has Kshs4.1 billion and Bungoma County has Kshs3.5 billion. Yet, this House passed what we call the Ledama Motion that gave directives or directions to county governments on how to deal with pending bills. To date, we have not seen implementation of those very clear resolutions. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, 24 counties have pending bills above Kshs1 billion. The problem is that they are not doing age analysis. This is because if you do age analysis, you will realize that some of the pending bills are five years and older. An example is Kirinyaga County, which had a pending bill stock of about Kshs1 billion. Out of it, Kshs500 million was five years old and above. This means that the governor has chosen to pay contractors in the current period. She has decided that the Ndathi contractors or the contractors of the previous administration will not be paid. Sometimes, governors say that they cannot and will not pay, forgetting that if there was someone with a valid claim who did work, they can go to court and they can force a charge against the county. That is why we said that the fiduciary risk in county governments far exceeds their revenue at Kshs500 billion because of mismanagement of pending bills. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the High Court sitting in Kitale made it clear that these task forces that are being established to review pending bills, Human Resources (HR), wage bills must go to their first port of call. The first port of call for each county governments is their internal audit function. Every county has an internal audit function and an audit committee. The Office of the Auditor-General is available. So, the High Court made it clear that those task forces are illegal. We have made that clear in our recommendations that we do not expect counties to set up task forces, but to use internal resources and also comply with the Senate resolution on settlement of pending bills. Let me move very quickly to another fiduciary risk that cuts across county governments. The Public Finance Management Act requires counties to demonstrate fiscal prudence. That means that wage bills should not exceed 35 per cent and development should be 30 per cent and above. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, 16 county governments have wage bills in excess of 50 per cent. This is a clear violation of the Public Finance Management (PFM) and the Constitution, but every year we agree we send them more money because they give us excuses that they are former municipalities. They give us excuses that county governments came to provide jobs. The benchmark is 35 per cent. Do we deal with the law as it is, or the law as it ought to be? The law as it is, is that the ceiling should be at 35 per cent. As I said, we have 16 counties above 50 per cent. Kisii County leads at 60 per cent, Nyeri at 55 per cent, Nairobi City County is at 56 per cent, Mombasa County, 57 per cent, Laikipia County, 55per cent, Homa Bay The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}