President Kenyatta puts MCAs on the spot over wasteful spending

President Uhuru Kenyatta has put Members of County Assemblies (MCAs) on the spot over allegations of wasteful spending.

In his address at the end of the National and County government coordinating summit on Thursday, the Head of State said that among the resolutions reached at the summit was to tame wasteful expenditure in both national and bounty governments.

President Kenyatta said both levels of government have agreed to cut down on travel expenditure and allowances by 50 per cent with the money realised from the cut back being directed towards development projects.

“There have been repeated accusations of waste and inappropriate budgeting and spending,” said President Kenyatta.

“Members of the County Assemblies in particular have been accused of excessive spending; while reports of abuse of power, privilege and county resources by members of the County Executives have been a feature of our national discourse,” he added.

Last year, there was uproar over misappropriation of funds by county assemblies through dubious trips both within and out of the country.

In October 2015, Nakuru MCAs were under fire allegedly spending Ksh 25 million on a bonding retreat in Mombasa with reports emerging, two weeks later, that seven MCAs from the Embu County Assembly were planning a trip to Mauritius to “gather knowledge” on early childhood education management.

The seven MCAs were to each get between Ksh500, 000 as allowances with Sh1 million going to their plane tickets.

In September last year, five Elgeyo Marakwet MCAs travelled to Congo on a controversial Ksh5 million benchmarking trip “aimed at improving sports in the county”.

In the same month, 16 MCAs from Migori County scheduled a trip to Dubai to learn about waste disposal in a trip that was to cost the county Ksh5.8 million.

The president called on both national and county governments to work together to avoid wastage of public resources while calling on Kenyans to play their part in ensuring sustainability by paying taxes, rates and levies and holding their governments to account.

President Kenyatta congratulated county governments for doing a fantastic job despite facing challenges including “inheriting national and local government staff who were in some cases inadequately trained and in other cases, more than the number required.”

He promised to provide the counties with all the necessary budgetary support, technical and human resources, policies and legislative instruments in order to address the challenges that they face.

“I urge the counties not to see the national government’s open hand of assistance as an attempt to belittle or micromanage the devolved units.  We are all stakeholders by right in this grand nation called Kenya,” he said

The two-day summit was held at Sagana State Lodge in Nyeri.

@benjaminwafula