Counties blow billions on wages, travel

Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo at her office recently. [PHOTO: Mbugua Kibera/STANDARD]

The Controller of Budget has raised alarm over ballooning wage bill in counties. The latest Controller of Budget report shows the 47 counties spent a massive Sh74.12 billion on salaries and other personnel emoluments in the first nine months of the 2014/2015 financial year.

Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo, says the personnel emoluments expense by the 47 counties accounted for 63.7 per cent of the total recurrent expenditure and 43 per cent of the total expenditure.

“The high expenditure on personnel emoluments is due to continued recruitment by counties despite the high wage bill. This trend has denied counties of crucial resources to implement development projects,” Ms Odhiambo said.

The Budget implementation review report shows that only Sh51.23 billion was used for development activities, Sh39.14 billion on operations and maintenance, and Sh3.34 billion on debt payment and pending bills.

Ms Odhiambo recommends that County Public Service Boards and the County Assembly Public Service Boards liaise with the national government to review staff establishment with a view to optimising staff levels.

The report released on Thursday also faulted some counties for continued unauthorised diversion of approved funds to expenditure items that were not included in work plans. The report also shows that counties had spent a massive Sh5.71 billion on domestic and foreign travels by the end of the third quarter against an annual allocation of Sh8.63 billion. This was an increase compared to the Sh4.9 billion spent over the same period the previous year.

Seven counties exceeded their annual allocation for domestic and foreign travel. These are; Vihiga (293.6 per cent), Murang’a (178.8 per cent), Embu (157.7 per cent), Nakuru (147 per cent), Uasin Gishu (117.5 per cent), Trans Nzoia (112 per cent) and Bomet (102.9 per cent). “This implies that funds meant for other activities were irregularly diverted to pay expenditure on domestic and foreign travel. We recommend the Auditor General undertakes a special audit of this expenditure,” states the report. Counties further spent Sh2 billion on Members of County Assembly’s sitting allowances against an annual allocation of Sh3.55 billion, an increase compared to Sh1.4 billion in the third quarter of the 2013/2014 financial year.

Some counties overspent above the recommended ceiling.  Turkana County Assembly spent Sh45.5 million on sitting allowances, which exceeded the annual budget allocation of Sh10 million by 333 per cent.

Other counties that recorded the highest proportion of expenditure on MCAs sitting allowances were Mombasa (110.7 per cent) and Kisii (107.1 per cent) while Makueni had spent all its budget allocation on MCAs sitting allowances by the end of the third quarter.

“Counties that recorded the lowest expenditure were Tana River (19.5 per cent), Wajir (17.5 per cent) and Vihiga (11.5 per cent). Nandi County did not budget for MCAs sitting allowances, but spent Sh31.36 million,” says the report. However, county governments improved their locally collected revenue from Sh19.1 billion in 2013/2014 to Sh25.17 billion in 2014/2015, in the same period.

Nairobi County generated the highest local revenue in absolute terms at Sh9.2 billion during the reporting period followed by Mombasa and Nakuru at Sh1.8 billion and Sh1.59 billion, respectively. On the other hand, Lamu and Tana River counties raised the least amount of revenue at Sh42.93 million and Sh20.06 million, respectively.