How officials swindle
in fake,inflated trips
By Martin Masai
Editor/Publisher
Exclusive- April 22,2024
Governor Wavinya Ndeti has put emergency brakes to all travel bonanza placing Machakos as the third highest traveller county.
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| Dr Ndambuki |
This comes after an internal memo signed by the County Secretary Dr. Muya Ndambuki.
He prohibited all domestic and foreign travel with immediate effect. Travel and funding will not happen without his express authority, said the terse memo.
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| The memo |
The memo, sent to Chief Officers, Secretary/ CEOs and County Solicitor and copied to all county ministers, chairman of the County Public Service Board Mr Arbanus Mutisya and the County Attorney is dated April 9,2024. It reached Gov Ndeti's office on April 11,2024.
The memo tells the County Finance Department not to process expenses and allowances for "any officer" without his authority.
Observers see the move as an effort by the governor to rein in rougue expenditure tendencies by the finance department.
Previously, the County Secretary and Head of Public Service did not seem to know who was going where, when and whyPreviously, the County Secretary and Head of Public Service did not seem to know who was going where, when and why- a major weakness, if not failure for any administration. Not anymore. The directive,if enforced will bring sanity in the county travel expenditure management at a time when the Wavinya administration is under focus for deployment of most of its resources on recurrent expenditure rather than on development.
It means that all trips by ministers, chief officers, directors, and officials of whatever rank are dead at least for the time being, unless authorised by Dr Ndambuki.
Though the memo never mentoned the fate of pending claims, it puts to question payment of genuine and fraudulent travel claims estimated at over Kes 400m that are pending across all government departments.
The most notorious are domestic travel claims that provide officials with a low lying fruit for income outside the salary framework. Many officials, both junior and seniors have competitively and routinely abused this loophole with full knowledge of the administration.
An official choked by the practice told The Anchor, "The Rot is so rampant that 3 officials travelling outside 50 kms inflate the claim by adding 7 other officials and pushing it from Kes 200,000 to Kes 700,000. When it is eventually paid, the money goes to other fake people, and the genuine claimants remain waiting.
The source explained that besides adding names, officials add more days to the trip to fatten the claim.
The practice is done with connivance with influential officials such as directors and Chief Officers, who sign memos as authority to pay.
The claims, some genuine, are many and are lying in every finance department. Finance officers pay claims where they have an interest like being listed as a claimant who never went for the trip.
Multiple sources say genuine claims take long to pay, waiting for months. Some made last year are still pending while others genarated two weeks ago have been paid
The source said the most notorious departments are Office Of the Governor( OOG),the Governor's Delivery Unit,(GDU)the Protocol Office, and the Department of Agriculture. In some instances, memos sent to the Finance Office in each department dissappear. Junior officers who have to take local training trips use their own money, yet other non-essential trips for bosses are paid without delay. " The situation is so grave that the juniors have nowhere to raise their grievances because their bosses are their very tormentors."
The clampdown on the trips however raises crucial issues; will there be an audit to verify genuine and fake claims? What action will be taken on authors of fictitious claims? Just what is the role of auditors within the government system? Did they have to wait until the Controller of Budget raises the red flag?
