Counties risk national government takeover to avert shutdown

By JACOB NG’ETICH

Counties that are yet to align their budgets with the Controller of Budget requirements will not receive any cash the Devolution Ministry has said.

The warning comes as the Members of County Assembly (MCAs) strike enters the third week. The leaders have paralysed county governments operations to demand pay increment.

Cabinet Secretary for Devolution Ann Waiguru in an exclusive interview with The Standard on Sunday said that though all counties passed their respective Appropriation Act before the deadline, the Controller of Budget declined to authorise release of money as those Acts contained unlawful expenditure.

“The devolved governments were required to review their Acts and align them to the law by September 30th, if the Acts have not been aligned due to the MCAs strike, no money can be released to the counties leading to disruption in the activities of counties and compromising service delivery,” said Ms Waiguru.

The Cabinet Secretary said the counties were setting themselves up for failure by not taking the Appropriation Act seriously and warned that those counties that will fail shall be taken over by the national government.

“The Constitution, the County Government law and the PFM Act provides that where county governments fail to deliver services, the National Government may, under specified circumstances, take over those services so that service delivery to Kenyans is not prejudiced,” Waiguru warned.

She said the MCAs being the lawmakers and part of the county government should not go on strike but resolve their issues within the institutions provided in law.

The MCAs have locked horns with the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) over the refusal to increase their pay until the job evaluation was completed.

Job evaluation

Three weeks ago MCAs meeting in Nairobi unanimously agreed to paralyse business in their counties until their salaries were reviewed upwards by SRC.

During the meeting at the Bomas of Kenya, chairman of the Kenyan County Assembly Speakers Abdi Nuh, presided over the vote where 2,000 MCAs agreed to down their tools from Thursday to protest SRC’s failure to address their salary hike demand.

Chairman of the Transitional Authority (TA) Kinuthia Wamwangi termed the move by the MCAs baffling and out of place given that they were answerable to the public.

“How can parliamentarians go on strike? The MCAs are people’s representatives and they are answerable to the public and so when they boycott work they are hurting the same people they are supposed to stand for,” said Mr Wamwangi.

The chairman accused the MCAs of behaving like a trade union and said though they have a right to ask for an increment they should not blackmail Kenyans.

“As TA we say there are mechanisms of problem solving, but what the MCAs are doing is abandoning the poor mwananchi who they are supposed to defend and represent (and continue) to be involved in an illegal strike,” said Wamwangi.

In the new demands the MCAs are asking for Sh257,500 from Sh79,200 while the County speakers want a pay increase from 225,000 to 512,800 a Sh2 million car grant and special duty allowance of Sh77,000.

The MCAs dropped their earlier demand for Sh350,000 from the current gazetted Sh79,200 gross salary which they say is not enough compared to the work they undertake as county legislators.

Mandera Majority Leader Robow Mohamed said the earlier demand for Sh350,000 was based on a proposal that the Parliamentary Select Committee on Local Authorities then chaired by Fred Kapondi in the 10th Parliament had recommended for the MCAs.

Mr Robow said the Serem-led team had promised to do job evaluation in three months’ time to address the thorny issue of salary increment and conclude the exercise two.