How Sakaja spent Sh176 m on domestic travel and zero on development
Governor Johnson Sakaja’s Nairobi County spent Sh178,8 million on domestic travel but did not spend a penny on development in the first quarter of the current financial year.
Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o says in a report that Nairobi City County spent all the Sh3.45 billion during the three months on recurrent expenditure alone.
The spending was 73.7 per cent of all the funds the Budget controller authorised.
During the period, Governor Sakaja spent 176.8 million on domestic and 11.9 million on foreign travel, she added that the Nairobi boss also spent 51.8 million on fuel alone, and Sh28 million on hospitality while at the same time, nothing was spent on development expenditure despite an allocation of Sh14 billion.
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“Analysis of expenditure by economic classification indicates that the County Executive spent Sh2.56 billion on employee compensation and Sh452.81 million on operations and maintenance. Similarly, the County Assembly spent Sh139.82 million on employee compensation and Sh294.98 million on operations and maintenance,” says the report.
This means that citizens of Nairobi county were subjected to starvation of development initiatives through the three months, as the county boss prioritised funds they got on paying salaries, allowances and operational expenses of offices.
The governor has violated the law that requires a minimum of 30 percent of the county government’s budget be allocated to development expenditures. Still, Sakaja has very little allocation for growth as he continues to splash on consumption.
This skewed spending implies that poor access to healthcare that sees the sick in some regions walk long distances to access hospitals, impassable roads, and poor access to early childhood development education will persist.
It’s an indictment of the governor who campaigned on the growth platform but has embraced the bad practice of paying lip service to development.
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This violates the Public Finance Management (PFM) Act of 2012, which mandates each public entity to allocate at least 30 per cent of its budget to development.
Furthermore, the act prohibits any expenditure on recurrent activities exceeding 70 per cent of the budget.
In simpler terms, this means that for every Sh1 spent on development by a public entity, spending on recurrent activities must not exceed a maximum of Sh2.33.
During the period under review, the 47 devolved units spent Sh60.3 billion on salaries and allowances and a paltry Sh6.9 billion on development, representing a paltry 3.7 per cent of the total allocation.
According to the Treasury-based office, a huge chunk of the monies were re-channelled to paying salaries and allowances and financing county operations and maintenance.