Pain and suffering as county staff go without salaries for months

Council of Governors Chairperson Ann Waiguru her Deputy Wajir Abdulahi Ahmed and other County Leaders during a meeting at Delta House in Nairobi on Tuesday, April, 16, 2024. [File, Standard]

A biting cash crunch has once again hit county governments in the wake of delays by the National Treasury to release funds.

A spot check by The Standard has revealed that workers in nearly all counties have not been paid for June and July.

Several devolved units have been forced to depend on bank loans and overdrafts from commercial banks and Saccos to pay their employees’ salaries.

Counties received their last allocations from the National Treasury in May, and since then majority have been getting loans to offset salaries and other crucial operations.

The National Treasury owes counties a whopping Sh60 billion as allocation for June and July. In Nakuru County, Dr Samuel Mwaura, the County Secretary issued an internal memo dated August 4, notifying the workers of delay in payment of their July salaries.

According to the memo, Dr Mwaura attributed the delay to the deactivation of the IFMIS payment platform used in processing government payments.

“We wish to notify you that there will be a delay in processing and paying out of July 2024 salaries since the IFMIS platform for the Financial Year 2024/2025 has not been activated. We assure you that once this is done by the National Government, we shall process,” read the memo.

Our survey has revealed that none of the 47 counties has received a penny since May 2024. In Murang’a County, workers were last paid in June.

A number of employees with accounts with two local saccos said they have received their July salaries.

“Those allied to the commercial banks have not received anything in their accounts,” said an employee.

The Standard learnt that workers at the County Assembly received their salaries for June and July through loans secured by the assembly leadership.

“Owing to the non-remittance the assembly applied for loans to pay the salaries to minimise the noise from the members,” said the source.

Efforts to get a comment from Finance CEC PKiarie Mwaura failed as he was said to be in a meeting.

In Laikipia County, Finance and Planning Chief Officer Daniel Ngumi said they have cleared the July salaries.

“We have paid the salaries as we await for July disbursement from the Treasury,” said Ngumi.

In Homa Bay County, workers have not been paid their July salaries. An employee of the county government said they last received salaries in June. “We were paid the June salary around July 10. We are currently waiting for the July salaries which we still don’t know when it will be paid,” he said.

Homa Bay CECM for Finance and Economic Planning Solomon Obiero said the workers are going to be paid by the end of this week. He said they had begun processing money for July salaries.

“We are already processing the workers’ salaries and they are going to begin getting their money by the end of this week,” Obiero said. 

Approve requisitions

On Tuesday, the Council of Governors (CoG) raised concern over delays by the Controller of Budget (CoB) to approve counties’ requisitions, stating that they cannot access Sh30.86 billion in equitable share arrears for June.

The CoG also claims they are yet to receive arrears of Sh30 billion for July. This comes just a month after governors requested the CoB to approve counties’ requisitions, hindering access to Sh32.76 billion in equitable share arrears for May.

Despite the national government disbursing the funds two weeks ago, counties are yet to utilise same due to bureaucracy while urging new Treasury CS John Mbadi to expedite the release.

Speaking in Kakamega, Governor Fernandes Barasa, also CoG chairman of the Finance and Economic Planning Committee, decried the delay.

“We are yet to receive in our designated accounts the disbursement for June, this was released to our County Revenue Funds accounts domiciled at the Central Bank, but because of the process of uploading the budget in IFMIS which has taken some time we are not yet,” said Barasa

Barasa said that at some point when there is a delay in the disbursement of funds from the national treasury they are forced to enter into agreements with local banks to get loans to pay the workers and later service the loans once they receive money

“We expect to face a big challenge in meeting our expenditure and needs moving forward and we are telling our people this year is going to be tougher than last year due to a reduction of Sh20 billion due to the rejection of the 2024 Finance bill but for us to solve the issue of delay in salary payment we have an agreement with some local banks,” said Barasa.

[Report by Benard Lusigi, James Omoro, Nikko Tanui, Yvonne Chepkwony, Boniface Gikandi and Jane Mugambi]