Only one county has received funds from Treasury – Governors

Only one county has received its financial allocation from the National Treasury as of September 20^th, 2015. This is according to the Council of Governors.

In a letter seen by Citizen TV at the Senate chambers, the Council of Governors – through its chair Peter Munya – accuses the national government of deliberately delaying the funds and therefore derailing development programmes.

Munya further argues that the disbursements, that should be done on a monthly basis, have been delayed for several months with several counties having not received any cash for over three months now.

According to Munya, out of the 47 applications for the funds by the counties in the month of July, 16 counties have not yet received their allocations.

For the month of August, out of the 47 applications only 12 counties received their allocations while 35 others have not received any response from the National Treasury.

The Council chair says that the county governments continue to face “tremendous challenges in service delivery due to these delays from the National Treasury”.

“The persistent delays and unpredictable disbursement of funds has negatively impacted service delivery with some counties almost grinding to a halt,” read part of the letter.

“In most counties, development has stalled due to delayed procurement of materials or payment of suppliers. Additionally, counties have been unable to pay staff salaries on time leading to labour unrest.”

Munya added that now counties are heavily borrowing from Commercial Banks to settle debts and the borrowed amounts are increasingly accruing interests.

By the letter addressed to Senate Speaker Ekwe Ethuro, Governors want the Senate to intervene and demand that the National Treasury discharges its legal mandate.

Last month, Governors expressed their displeasure with the government’s delay in disbursing county funds.

According to Munya, the national government was – as at then – still holding Ksh 280 billion meant to facilitate operations in the 47 counties.

The Governors further linked the health workers strike to the delay in disbursement of county funds.