A parliamentary watchdog committee has said ballooning debts could soon disrupt county operations.
The Senate County Public Accounts and Investments committee raised concerns that despite several attempts, including President Uhuru Kenyatta’s directive to clear the pending bills, the debts have soared.
In its report on the financial operations of the counties for three financial years (2015-18), the panel, chaired by Sam Ongeri from Kisii, has accumulated debts running into billions of shillings – a situation that could be detrimental if left unchecked.
"The county governments should prepare a debt management strategy every financial year and the Auditor General undertake a special audit to verify the authenticity of the pending bills,” Ochillo Ayacko (Migori) said.
Ayacko is the vice-chairman of the committee. He tabled the reports in the House on Tuesday.
“Pending bills hinder the growth and development of counties,” the legislator said.
“It is sad, county staff use the pending to conceal the fraud. It becomes a very untidy situation because they are also related to budget absorption.”
In their defence, county bosses have blamed the ballooning bills on the delayed release of funds by the National Treasury.
The committee recommended that pending bills form the first charge in the budget of the successive financial year.
Ayacko reckoned that the situation has been worsened by counties' failure to raise enough local revenue, with key streams such as land rates, rental properties and utility bills underperforming.
He said non-collection of these items and failure to collect local revenue lead to many problems, including pending bills.
“It is something every county could not explain. I can report that no county was able to collect local revenue they had proposed or budgeted to collect,” he said.
“The explanations they were giving looked like they were hiding in small boardrooms and recycling the same kind of explanation; that election activities made it impossible for them to meet their own generated revenue target.”
Ayacko said county executives and assemblies also flagrantly disregarded relevant laws, including the Public Finance Management (PFM) Act, 2012; the Public Audit Act; the County Government Regulation, and the Procurement and Asset Disposal Act.
“A look at the county executives and county assemblies who appeared before the committee, there is an indication that it would be accurate to describe them as serious violators of the law,” he said.
“If you look at the number of pieces of legislation that they were infracting and violating; in fact, a strict push for compliance with the legislation and enforcement of those legislations, we would have quite a number of executives and management of county assemblies in jail.”
Ayacko lamented that despite the Senate and the National Assembly flagging and identifying perpetrators, investigative institutions have not performed to the expectations of the nation.
“For instance, if you look at the Public Audit Act, it has very serious sanctions prescribed for non-availability of documents for audit."
