Waiguru demands answers from Treasury, suspects malice in budget errors

Kirinyaga Governor Anne Waiguru on Monday once again blamed the National Treasury over audit queries that have seen a number of counties accused of allocating funds to functions of the national government.

Appearing before the Senate Public Accounts and Investments Committee, Governor Waiguru said the county expenditure reports bearing budget lines for national government functions may have been maliciously designed at the Treasury perhaps to steal funds.

“Treasury needs to explain who designed that particular report that has bizarre expenditures. It was developed by somebody… It did not get into the IFMIS system by itself. Someone needs to ask Treasury, what was that report for? Is somebody reallocating budgets below the line?” she posed.

She insisted that there was no way county funds would be spent outside the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMIS), further questioning why such strange errors only emerged this year.

“Why wasn’t there such a problem last year or the year before? It is because they had not done what they have done now. Treasury needs to come out clean and explain who tampered with that system. Designing of those reports is done at the Treasury,” she said.

The Governor wondered whether national government could be robbing counties of their funds through budgetary reallocation, noting that Kirinyaga has not received over Ksh.2 billion of its budget yet the financial year is coming to a close.

“As of March this year, Kirinyaga had only received Ksh.2.7 billion out of Ksh.4.2. Even by the end of this financial year, we won’t reach Ksh.3.5 billion,” she said.

The Committee Chair Moses Kajwang’, however, down played Waiguru’s explanation as mere speculation.

“That speculation leads to some very bizarre thoughts. I am getting very scared now as a result of the speculation,” said Kajwang.

Early this month, 11 counties among them Kirinyaga, Kiambu, Kitui, Kakamega, Garissa, Kirinyaga, Kwale, Lamu, Nyamira and Samburu were put on the spot for purportedly allocating funds to functions of the national government including State House functions, foreign advisory services among others.

The Treasury, however, sent a memo to counties informing them that they were using the wrong formats to record their financial statements, hence, the outrageous budget lines.

Waiguru, however, insists there is more than meets the eye and someone should take responsibility for the misreporting on IFMIS.

She has since demanded the resignation of the IFMIS Director and an apology from the National Treasury.