Late Nyeri Governor Wahome Gakuru’s family to receive Sh56m

The late Nyeri Governor Wahome Gakuru's wife, Catherine Gakuru. [File, Standard]

The family of the late Nyeri Governor Wahome Gakuru will receive Sh56 million in compensation and insurance.

According to the Budget Committee report tabled in the county assembly by Chairman Gibson Kuria, Sh66 million is to be provided to cater for the governor’s burial expenses and compensation.

The assembly has proposed Sh36 million be set aside as compensation and Sh20 million in insurance premium cover while Sh10 million will be for burial expenses.

Radical changes

However, the assembly has also proposed radical changes to the supplementary budget, which was the late governor’s brainchild, slashing funds allocated to Agriculture and Health and allocating the money for access roads.

The county supplementary budget was presented to the assembly on November 14 and amounted to Sh7.8 billion.

Out of this, Sh5.5 billion was set aside for recurrent expenditure and Sh2.3 billion for development projects.

The committee has proposed Sh30 million be allocated to ward-specific funds under development expenditure and the allocation for access roads be increased by Sh85 million to Sh135 million.

Mr Kuria’s committee observed the salaries paid to staff collecting revenue was about 32 per cent of the actual revenue collected in 2016/17.

“The committee noted over Sh200 million is spent to pay revenue collection officers. The collection of revenue is becoming too expensive and, therefore, strict measure should be put in place to address the issue,” said Kuria.