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"id": 693269,
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"content": "development in the year under review. You would expect that the development expenditure in the year would be the amount spent in totality of the projects undertaken within that particular period. The amount expended to implement certain projects, for example, a road, a market or there could be something like construction of a youth polytechnic, ECD and learning materials. The expenditure given is Kshs1,161,269,008 for all the projects undertaken under project within the year. There is on page 25 a document titled “Projects/Programmes Implementation Status Financial Year 2015/2016. It is a long list that runs all the way from page 25-61. These are the projects undertaken within the year in the County of Nyeri. In that list, there is a column headlined: - “Actual Expenditure” which is on top of all the pages. There is project titled, “Expected Duration, Sources, Estimated Value, Total Disbursement and so on. There is actual expenditure. This is a report on what was actually expended on a particular project within the year. If you tally the amount reported as having been expended for actual expenditure, in an ideal situation where there is an accountable report, then that number should be as the number reported as total expended for development. But in this case, in fact, I think deliberately, this status report did not have a total. This is a document given to us, the County Assembly, by the Executive. It had no total at all; they took time to calculate it. This is just an arithmetic intervention and you will see if you tally that amount, it comes to a total of Kshs808,292,896. There is a summary we have set out on page 66 that may simplify your analysis where we have tallied the actual expenditure. This is development expenditure. The actual expenditure is Kshs1,161,269,008. We have also tallied that project expenditure. It comes to Kshs808,292,896. The question that immediately poses is this difference of Kshs352,976,112 that the Executive admits in their own report was expended for development; in which project did it fall? At which particular programme was it directed? That is the gap. That is what we are calling a material non-disclosure in a report. The County Executive and the Governor deliberately chose not to disclose a difference of Kshs352,972,112 in their own annual implementation status report given to the County Assembly and I believe given to the office of the Controller of Budget and to all the other offices, including the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA). First of all, there are no expenditure items excluded from reporting. At the outset, an implementation status report must include all expenditure items regardless of their character, designation and priority. The duty to disclose does not discriminate against any item. However, let us consider their response as to why the Executive and the Governor refused deliberately to disclose the sum of Kshs352,976,112. In fact, as counsel for the Governor was opening, he said that he does not know where we got this number. Of course, he does not know because in their own report they did not put it. Only a keen eye would have noticed that there is a shortfall or a difference. The response they have now made was only prompted by these proceedings. If the governor was not under charge, we would not have received this response. Is that the way that we want to run our counties? Is that the standard that this Senate wants to uphold as a manner of application and management of public finances? That is a question for the Senate to answer. However, let us consider the response. I am referring to “Governor’s Documents, Volume II,” which is bound in red. Page 1 is their responses to the charges. They explain why Kshs352, 976,913 did not find any favour or merit in their report. They say: The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}