Four counties in Western region continue to struggle with high wage bills despite restructuring plans put in place to address the issue.
Vihiga, Kakamega, Busia and Bungoma counties have had to put some development projects on the back burner so as to be able to pay staff salaries.
According to Vihiga Governor Wilber Ottichilo, the counties inherited workers from the defunct Local Authorities “but later we received a new structure and guidelines of hiring new staff from the Transition Authority.”
The county chief said his administration has not been able to do much in terms of development because a lot of money goes into recurrent expenditure.
Vihiga continues to experience huge wage bill challenges even after laying off at least 1,500 workers since Governor Ottichilo took over.
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Pending bills
Ottichilo has in the past blamed his predecessor Moses Akaranga for employing too many workers whose pay gobbled over Sh200 million every month at the expense of major county projects.
“My administration has not been able to fully implement some of the projects we had planned as captured in the County Integrated Development Plan (CIDP) due to the high wage bill and pending bills which we are under pressure to clear,” said Governor Ottichilo.
By April 2019, Bungoma County’s wage bill increased to Sh2.72 billion up from Sh1.84 billion as captured in the first half of the financial year 2017/2018.
Bungoma Speaker Emmanuel Stuma disclosed that the wage bill currently accounts for 44 per cent of the total expenditure.
Governor Wycliffe Wangamati’s administration has not been able to absorb at least 986 casual workers as ordered by the Labour court due to financial constraints.
Last week, Wangamati, while appearing before the Senate County Public Accounts and Investment Committee (CPAIC) chaired by Migori Senator Ochilo Ayacko in Kakamega town argued that hiring the casual workers on permanent and pensionable terms could worsen the wage bill crisis.
But the governor defended his push to hire 236 village administrators saying it was critical in the delivery of services to the locals.
The situation has been the same in Kakamega and Busia counties where Governors Wycliffe Oparanya and Sospeter Ojaamong’s flagship projects are in danger of stalling. This partly due to high wage bills and delayed disbursement of funds.
Kakamega County wage bill stands at 31 per cent translating to Sh4 billion annually, according to the County finance executive Beatrice Sabana.
She said the spending is within the requirements and has not had any effect on the implementation of development projects.
“The key issue that has affected development this year has been delayed disbursement of funds by the National Treasury. As of now, Treasury has only disbursed funds for February,” said Ms Sabana.
Kakamega County’s 2020/2021 budget estimates projects revenue of Sh15 billion inclusive of equitable sharable revenue of Sh11 billion, conditional grants of Sh1.6 billion and projected local revenue of Sh2 billion.
Another Sh1 billion is the expected balance brought forward from the last financial year.
Health services takes the lion’s share of Sh4.4 billion with Sh2.7 billion being employee cost followed by recurrent at Sh720,469,215 while development has been allocated Sh1 billion.
In the county, infrastructure development is the key project under health and it will involve equipping of phase1 of the County Teaching and Referral Hospital (CTRH), Construction of phase 2 of the CTRH and upgrading of other health facilities.
Some of the health facilities targeted are Khwisero, Shianda, Ileho and Matete hospitals. The county also intends to equip Mumias West and Shamakhubu level 4 hospitals, equipping level 2 and 3 facilities, construction of mortuaries, and completion and operationalisation of stalled health projects.
Reduce wastages
Roads, Infrastructure, Public Works and Energy were allocated Sh1.9 billion out of which Sh1.8 billion was earmarked for development, Sh77 million recurrent expenditures and another Sh31 million employees cost.
But Oparanya’s administration has been working on measures to rationalise its expenditure in a bid to reduce wastages and focus on key projects.
In July 2020, Ojaamong’ assented to the Busia County Appropriation Bill, 2020 that paved way for his administration to draw the money from the county’s exchequer account to pay staff and enhance service delivery.
Recurrent expenditure took the lion’s share of the county budget at Sh4.9 billion while development was allocated Sh2.4 billion in the 2020/2021 fiscal year.
The effective budget implementation report released earlier by the Controller of Budget showed that of Sh3.91 billion earlier earmarked for development, only Sh760 million had been utilised in the first nine months of 2019/2020 financial year, representing 19.4 per cent of the annual budget.
