City Hall speaks out on Sonko’s ‘bouncing cheques’
Nairobi County government has come out to clear the air over claims of some bouncing cheques among the over 60, 000 bursary cheques it issued two weeks.
County Education Executive Ms Janet Ouko refuted the claims that some of the cheques had been rejected by banks, stating that her office is yet to receive any of the alleged ‘bouncing cheques’ from ward representatives since they were issued.
“It has not been brought to my attention that there are cheques with errors that have bounced and as far as I am concerned those are rumours and I won’t deal with rumours,” said Ms Ouko as she assured Nairobi residents that issuance of the cheques to needy students by the MCAs was going on well.
INVALID CHEQUES
Ms Ouko’s response comes on the backdrop of concerns raised by minority leader Elias Otieno Okumu at the County Assembly on Thursday claiming that most of the cheques are invalid.
“We gave out bursary cheques in our wards but most of them are fake because of money issues or it was just deliberate.
“Let us correct all those errors and put money in the account for all those poor people to help money to pay for their children,” said Mr Okumu.
But Ms Ouko has denied the claims, saying that she is yet to receive any returned cheque.
She said the MCAswhom she has contacted have not raised any such issues.
‘CREATING CONFUSION’
“We do not have even one returned cheque. Where are they, is he keeping them in the house if indeed there is a bounced cheque? They are supposed to return the cheques to the drawer to issue another one. Can we stop creating confusion where there is none,” she said.
She, however, admitted that there may be some clerical errors in the cheques including spelling mistakes and signature mismatch owing to the volume, but allayed fears that it will spell doom for the intended beneficiaries of the bursaries saying there should be no cause for alarm.
“Whether or not there was an error in the cheque will mean that the person will not get the money. The only problem is that the person has not brought back the cheque for us to address the issue,” she said.