The County Government of Machakos operates a total of 31 illegal accounts in commercial banks, the Controller of Budget (COB) reports.
This operation is contrary to Regulations 82(1)(b) of the PFM (County Governments) Regulations, 2015, which requires that County government bank
accounts be opened and maintained at the Central Bank of Kenya. The only exception to this regulation applies to imprest bank accounts for petty
cash and revenue collection bank accounts, unless the county uses all its 31 accounts for petty cash and revenue collection.
In COB's report for the last 8 months on county finances, it was recommended that this anomaly be corrected promptly. The oversight also highlights a dismal performance in revenue collection which has hindered Wavinya Ndeti's administration to meet revenue collection projections for 2023/2024.
"The under-performance of own-source revenue collection at Kshs.1.05 billion against an annual target of Kshs.4.01 billion, represents 26.3 per cent of the annual target" the COB report says.
The performance is underlined by inconsistent decisions made in the finance office under the minister Onesmus Kuyu during the year such as shuffling revenue staff, including the employment of over 400 new ones who were initially campaigners for Governor Ndeti. The hallmark of these inconsistencies is the removal of 9 Senior Revenue Officers who remain unemployed, and the removal of Revenue Chief Officer Mike Senga.
Allegedly, the revenue collected goes into people's pockets, rather than into the illegal accounts to avoid tracking.
The report also notes a staggering high level of pending bills, which amounts to Kshs.2.90 billion as of March 31, 2024. "Further, there
was non-adherence to the pending bills payment plan by the County Treasury," the report says.
The COB also cites the use of manual payroll. "Personnel emoluments amounting to Kshs.427.21 million were processed through the manual payroll, accounting for 8.4 per cent of the total payroll cost."
COB says the manual payroll is prone to abuse and may lead to the loss of public funds where there is a lack of proper controls.
The report further notes that there was an over-expenditure on the County Assembly committee sitting allowances at Kshs.48.12
million against the annual approved budget allocation of Kshs.43.0 million for the 61 MCAs.
The assembly expends this money through sitting allowances for its 22 Standing Committees formed to misuse public funds through allowances- signifying that the malfeasance is widespred in the entire government.
It enhances the grave doubts about the assembly's capabilities to oversee an outrightly incompetent executive on an eating spree.
COB says the over expenditure at the assembly is
an indication of possible misappropriation of public funds.
COB further highlighted the unexplained variances of Kshs.400.90 million between the submitted expenditures reports and IFMIS
expenditure reports, indicating that the county is spending millions outside the IFMIS system.
More worrying for the residents is a significant underperformance of the development budget at an 18.7 per cent absorption rate as opposed to the expected absorption rate of 75 per cent of the total development expenditure in the reporting period.
It means that even the little revenue raised by the government, Governor Wavinya is unable to utilize the money to deliver services and development to her people.
It is highly unlikely that this budget absorption matrix will dramatically increase in the final 2023/2024 audit,meaning that the people of Machakos will have endured 2 successive years of an underperforming administration.
However COB says Sub-programmes with the highest levels of implementation based on absorption rates were in the Department of Health -Mwala Level 4 Hospital at 93.3 per cent, Matuu Level 4, at 86.9 per
cent, Kalama Level 4,at 85.9 per cent, and General Administration and Support services at 71.0 per cent of budget allocation.
It appears that COB has identified county procurement processes as the biggest impediment to budget absorption.
Procurement in the county has been centralised in the governor's office under on Mr Mathuki, who has one foot in the finance office and the other in the governor's office. This ensures that procurement is done under the governor's tooth comb. Sources say her son- Charles Nzuki Oduwole, makes the final decision over who gets what.
Efforts to get a comment from Governor Ndeti were unsuccessful.
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