Kisii County Assembly passes Sh901m supplementary budget

Kisii, Wednesday, May 24, 2023

KNA by Dedan Mwembi & Mercy Osongo

Kisii County Assembly has approved a supplementary budget of Sh901 million that will fund various development activities in the county for the remaining part of the 2022/2023 financial year.

Speaking to the press at the Assembly premises in Kisii town, the County Finance and Appropriations Committee Chairperson Peter Otachi said the budget will enable the county to distribute bursaries to students, pay salaries, and clear all the pending bills.

“If you look at the last budget, the money that came for salary in the months of June and July was spent on this year’s budget creating a deficit and therefore, we had to supplement the budget in order to pay salaries,” said Otachi.

He noted the allocation for the bursary was given a high priority following an advisory by the Controller of Budget that the bursary fund does not fall within the categorization of a development vote and should be budgeted for as a recurrent expenditure vote.

Kisii County Government had earlier sought for guidance from the budget advisor on whether the county could continue to budget for bursary funds for human development under the development vote.

Otachi added that they had added a provision for the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) for vulnerable populations and a trade scheme to improve the living standards of residents in the budget.

The Chairperson noted that Sh236 million from the supplementary budget would be used to pay the contractors approved for payment by the Committee on Pending Bills Verification two months ago.

Kisii Governor Simba Arati had appointed the Pending Bills Verification Committee through the Kenya Gazette Notice no. 14024 of 2022 after discovering suspicious double claims by contractors on similar projects where a number of contractors were claiming funds for services not delivered or rendered at all.

Despite the committee being tasked with verifying pending bills worth Sh1.96 billion, the team tabled a report in March 2023 stating that bills amounting to Sh1.2 billion could not be paid because the contractors lacked a single document showing they were contracted by the county.

 Courtesy ; K. N. A