Within 8 months in 2023, Kes 484m went
to Domestic and Kes 106m to Foreign trips
By Martin Masai,
Editor/ Publisher
YOUR County leaders gobbled a good half a billion shillings in the last 8 months of the last financial year in travel alone, according to the office of the Controller of Budget.
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During the period, expenditure on domestic travel amounted to Kshs.484.60 million and comprised Kshs.165.19 million spent by the County Assembly and Kshs.319.41 million by the County Executive.
Expenditure on foreign travel amounted to Kshs.106.99 million and comprised Kshs.57.54 million by the County Assembly and Kshs.49.45 million by the County Executive.
An analysis by The Anchor shows that the county leaders undertook 24 trips to various countries including South Africa, Canada, the United States, Germany, Dubai, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Israel, the United Kingdom, Tanzania and Rwanda.
The County Assembly took the bulk of the foreign junkets- 16 of them, while the County Executive took 8 trips. The most expensive one to you gobbled Kes 6.4 million where 4 unnamed members of the County Executive travelled to Istanbul, Turkey to attend and Executive Leadership Summit between December 11- 22, 2023. Such summits, normally opportunities to buy commercialized executive MBA qualifications may have brought value to the four individuals on the trip but not to the county or the people of Machakos.
Another junket was executed by another 4 unnamed people who went to the Cop 28 Summit in UAE Between November 30- December 12, 2023. It means 8 members of the County Executive were out of the country between Dec 11-12, 2024, attending to business whose tangible benefit to the county may never be known. The UAE summit used a cool Kes 4.3 million.
The second most expensive trip was taken by the County Assembly on 8-12 October 2023 where 7 unnamed members of the Machakos County Assembly travelled to Tokyo, Japan to attend an Internet Governance Summit. Kes 5.3 million was used during the 5 day trip.
Most of the trips used between 3-2 million shillings. Probably the most telling trips were those made to the United States, each undertaken by 1 unnamed member of the County Executive that cost a total of Kes 2.7m. Another one to Germany by 2 members of the County Executive used Kes. 1.7m.
One of the most curious character of the trips by the County Assembly is that most of them had seven participants- 14 to be precise, out of the 16 trips. The largest delegations by the assembly comprised on 14 and 8 people, both of which were trips to Arusha, Tanzania.
The bulk of the money used for travel and subsistence went to local travel. The Schedule from the Controller of Budget did not specify the destinations that the county leadership went to.
