By Faith Anene and Daniel Odongo, Kakamega
The County Government of Kakamega spent a whooping Sh14.81billion on salaries and a paltry Sh2.80billion on development activities.
The report released by Dr Margaret Nyakang’o, the Controller of Budget titled ‘County Governments Budget Implementation Review Report for the Financial Year 2023/24’ shows that in the 2023/24 financial year, expenditure on employee compensation was Sh7.08 billion, or 47.8 per cent of the available revenue, which amounted to Sh14.81 billion.
The wage bill also included Sh3.02 billion paid to health sector employees, translating to 42.6 per cent of the total wage bill.
“The increase in employee compensation is to the inclusion of stipends paid to the County Youth and Women Empowerment Program as stipends and Community Health Promoters. This expenditure represented an increase from Sh6.24 billion (13.5 per cent) reported in 2022/23 financial year,” the report states in part
It further reads: “Further analysis indicates that Personal Emolument (PE) costs amounting to Sh6.55 billion were processed through the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Database (IPPD) system, while Sh527.94 million was processed through manual payrolls. The manual payrolls accounted for 7.5 per cent of the total PE cost,”
Dr Nyakang’o notes in her report that “the High wage bills which accounted for 47.8 per cent of the County total revenue in FY 2023/24 is above the ceiling provided in law,”
.According to the report, pending bills jumped to Sh1.83billion as of June 30, this year, from Sh1.54billion that was reported in the 2022/23 financial year and that the County Treasury did not adhere to the payment plan for pending bills.
“At the beginning of FY 2023/24, the County reported a stock of pending bills amounting to Sh1.54 billion, comprising Sh421.21 million for recurrent expenditures and Sh1.12 billion for development activities,” the report reads in part
It further reads : “As of the end of FY 2023/24, the outstanding amount was Sh1.83 billion, which comprised of Sh1.12 billion for development and Sh721.07 million for recurrent, which included the County Assembly bills for Sh177.23 million,”
The report also shows that, the Kakamega County Small Scale Trade Development Fund has an outstanding loan balance of Sh40.531million which was lent to traders and not collected in FY2023/24, which the Controller of Budget noted that the fund duplicates the functions executed by Kakamega County Microfinance Corporation.
“The County government of Kakamega operated 64 accounts with commercial banks, excluding revenue collection accounts. This is contrary to Regulations 82(1)(b) of the PFM (County Governments) Regulations, 2015, which required that County government bank accounts must be opened and maintained at the Central Bank of Kenya,” the report further reads.
The commercial bank accounts are for the hospital’s revenue collections and operations, conditional grants, county corporations, and county established funds.
The CoB report shows that ‘Own-source revenue under performed at Sh1.35 billion against an annual target of Sh2.20 billion”,
End
