Henry Rotich cannot account for Shs 8.2 Billion as Shs 200 Million goes missing in Vihiga County

by Adrian Opiyo · July 10, 2019

It’s so sad how many government institutions have failed to account for the amount of money that it does spend considering the high unemployment rate among the youth and high debt burden in the country. We talk about combating corruption and preventing looting of public funds yet the government itself is the pioneer of it. Will we really end this? Early this year Governors from the western region were on the limelight due to misuse of public funds. Among them included the County of Busia, Kakamega and Vihiga. According to the Auditor General Edward Ouko, the County of Vihiga County couldn’t explain expenditure amounting to Sh213, 602, 705 that was part of employee compensation.

Vihiga County neighbor Busia County is also on the spot for irregular recruitment and hospital facelifts which it was unable to account for. In May this year the Auditor General Edward Ouko made a report of how Counties including Kiambu, Kitui, Nyeri and Kirinyaga were spending hundreds of millions of shillings on functions that lack jurisdiction. The the senators termed the report as ‘bad reporting’. “It’s just an issue of bad reporting or the information was not customized for that particular reporting of the budget, so you end up some budget heads from a template of the national government budget. It’s not an issue of whether the counties spent money on those items, no,” said Governor Waititu when queried about National Expenditure that appeared in Kiambu County Budget Statements. He went on and said the most fundamental thing was accountability.

Today the National Treasury was on the spot for failing to account for more than Sh8.2 billion according to a report tabled by the Auditor General Edward Ouko. The report indicated that the Sh 8.2 billion was part of sh 40.3 billion in grants and transfers to other government entities by the ministries headed by CS for Treasury Henry Rotich. This report was tabled in the Parliament House during the fiscal year ending 30^th June 2019. The CS for Treasury fails to account for such amount of money when the government is struggling to manage its budget deficits, debt burden and unemployment? Let us wait for the DCI investigations and report if there will be any.

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