Baringo County cannot account for Sh230m, budget office says
The county executive and assembly cannot account for more than Sh230 million set aside in the 2022/2023 financial year.
Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o, in her latest report, has revealed that the county government used Sh32.9 million meant for the health docket without transmission into the County Revenue Fund (CRF).
“There was a diversion of funds by the county treasury and poor budgeting practices, where the county used funds without authority to incur expenditure in some departments,” the report reads in part.
The report further reveals that no financial records were submitted as required to explain how money set aside for various county funds was used.
In the report that covered the months of June to September 2022, it emerged that the county has established a total of eight funds with an annual budget of Sh205.6 million. However, fund administrators failed to submit financial reports to explain how the money was used.
The allocations include car loan and house mortgage scheme (Sh2 million), bursary and scholarships fund (Sh25 million), emergency fund (Sh22.5 million), small and medium-sized enterprise fund (Sh4 million), co-operative development fund (Sh3.5 million), community wildlife conservation fund (Sh5 million), MCAs’ car and mortgage fund (Sh140 million) and assembly staff car loans and mortgage fund (Sh3.6 million).
Baringo County is also one of the devolved units that have been using a manual payroll in the payment of wages and salaries instead of the recommended Integrated Personnel and Payroll Database (IPPD) system.
The report says the county government paid a total of Sh18.4 million through the manual payroll, accounting for 2.3 per cent of the total payroll cost.
Other counties with the highest wage payments made through the manual system are Nakuru (Sh1.06 billion), Garissa (Sh1.03 billion), Vihiga (Sh934.89 million), Siaya (Sh792.55 million), Kiambu (Sh776.11 million), Homa Bay (Sh694.33 million), Laikipia (Sh646.68 million), Kisumu (Sh515.30 million), Murang’a (Sh504.12 million) and Bungoma (Sh214 Million).
Dr Nyakang’o has urged county governments to fast-track the acquisition of staff personal identification numbers to ensure the entire wage bill is processed through IPPD.
In 2014, a preliminary audit of the public service payroll revealed that Kenyan taxpayers were losing more than Sh1.8 billion annually in salary payments to ghost workers.
County governments officially took over the management of staff payroll in 2014.
The National government installed the IPPD system in all 47 counties and trained 219 officers on the management of the labour force in counties.
However, ten years since the advent of devolution, most counties are still avoiding to use the IPPD system, opting for the illegal manual system instead. BY DAILY NATION
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