The Treasury has slashed Sh9.5 billion from the Constituency Development Fund kitty. The Government had allocated Members of Parliament Sh34.5 billion but recently proposed to cut the amount to Sh25 billion in the supplementary budget. This is in line with the June ruling seeking to keep MPs’ hands off the cash.
The MPs have been trying to wiggle through the ruling that only allows legislators to fund 2.5 per cent of the total revenue raised by the national government. They have made amendments to the CDF law empowering the national government to directly fund constituencies projects.
“The initial figure was based on the total budget but CDF needs to come from the national government’s budget so the reasoning was that by taking Sh9.5 billion off it will bring it to the figure after division of revenue with counties,” The Institute for Social Accountability (TISA) Executive Director Wanjiru Gikonyo said.
TISA petitioned court to stop disbursement of the budgetary allocation in a bid to have the funds controlled by counties, a matter that will go to full hearing once a date is set by a High Court bench. Furious MPs indicated the ruling hampered issuance of bursaries to many needy children as they sought to find a way round it to get Treasury to disburse the money. MPs were reportedly seeking to create an amorphous model fashioned on the economic stimulus package to get Treasury to disburse the balance of Sh10 billion.
CDF Committee Chairman Moses Lessonet, however, denied that they were plotting to find a way to get the cash. “The Sh25 billion is in accordance to the court order, we wouldn’t like to go that route,” Mr Lessonet told The Standard on Saturday when asked how Treasury responded to the idea of using economic stimulus package model.
This comes on the back of questionable spending of the taxpayers money by MPs after a report by the Auditor General Edward Ouko showed that 273 out of 290 the legislators stole or wasted Sh3.85 billion under CDF in their first full year in office. The Standard on Sunday expose showed that out of 285 audit reports only 12 constituencies were cleared over their spending of the Sh23 billion released to the fund.
More opaque
“We have written to the auditor general’s office to get detailed information over the widespread abuse of CDF cash and poor accountability which has allowed them to use this money as a campaign kitty,” Ms Gikonyo said. She says another amendment introduced by the MPs, removing the requirement to submit estimates to Treasury before the CDF cash is approved, will make it even more opaque to scrutinise. This is likely to give steam to the push to have legislators kicked out of the kitty where they have been accused of using cronyism to influence projects through their appointed members of the CDF committees. The TISA boss said they argued in their suit that CDF was irrelevant in the current constitutional dispensation.
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