Africa-Press – Kenya. Siaya Governor James Orengo has appealed to the national government to release money that’s due to counties.
During his inaugural State of the County address to the county assembly of Siaya on Friday, Orengo said the delays were hurting service delivery to the county’s residents.
The governor noted that counties are yet to receive their equitable share of revenue allocation from the national treasury for the months of November and December .
“The delays are hurting the county governments . It is affecting service delivery to Kenyans,” he said.
He however noted that national economy has suffered shocks that led to the depreciation of the Kenyan Shillings in comparison to the country’s neighbours.
“Floods , drought and other calamities has further affected the rest of the country,” The disbursements needs to be prompt to ensure delays do not affect counties fiscal capacity and ability to operate,” he said. .
“Counties have a right to a stable and predictable disbursements. We are yet to receive the November and December disbursements.”
But despite the delays, the governor noted that his administration has managed to reduce the burden of the pending bills and also managed to pay salaries and promptly pay statutory fees.
“Remittance of the statutory deduction is now up to date, unlike in the past,” he said.
“Salary payments has also remained within reasonable timeliness.”
He said for instance, his administration has paid its staff the December salaries despite not receiving the share of equitable revenue and disbursements for November and December from the national treasury.
He said the county government had Sh741 million as at June 30, 2023, of pending bills which has now been reduced after Sh469 million was paid by Dec 15, 2023.
Orengo who has been office for one year also decried the insecurity within the Lake Victoria and other parts of Siaya and appealed to the security agencies to urgently intervene.
“There is need to address the situation immediately,” he said.
He said his administration has ensured that it abides by the constitution when making policy decisions and lauded the assembly for playing its oversight role.
In June this year the assembly approved the annual development plan and the program based budget for 2023/24 fiscal year worth Sh11.3 billion.
The governor however noted that his government experienced a cocktail of problems from the abuse of impress account, failure to raise targeted own source revenue, the pay roll register issues, a ballooning wage bill and issue of ghost workers.
“We don’t want to wish a way these problems and measures have since been put in place to address them,” he said.
He observed that detailed raft of measures are being rolled out to boost Own source revenue collections.
Orengo disclosed that amongst the robust measures include Revenue automation system which has been procured to boost collections.
It will soon be deployed according to the governor.
A system to guarantee reform and management of the County’s financial administration has also been developed.
“We now have Siaya impress management policy to address the weakness that existed in the management of the impress account,” the governor said.
For More News And Analysis About Kenya Follow Africa-Press
