Blow to county budget as civil society heads to court

The Kisumu County government's 2018/19 budget is under scrutiny after civil society groups threatened to have it quashed for lack of public participation.

The rights groups yesterday said they would seek court orders compelling Governor Anyang' Nyong'o to recall the budget estimates.

Speaking at Shauri Moyo ACK Hall, where they congregated to scrutinise the document, the members said the executive duped the assembly by presenting the document for debate without public input.

In a joint statement read on their behalf by the CEO of Transform Empowerment for Action Initiative George Oduor, they gave Prof Nyong’o three days to recall the document.

“Kisumu County Government has breached the constitutional requirement on the budget process by postponing public participation, which was to take place on May 31, 2018, after which they announced new dates which never materialised despite members of the public attending in all the seven sub-counties,” read the statement in part.

Judicial redress

Oduor said they had sought the county government's intervention on several occasions but no action had been taken, forcing them to seek judicial redress. “What bothers us most is that in our engagements with the Assembly, they admitted that there were flaws in the budget-making process. However, they do not want to take the initiative to correct the anomalies,” he said.

But County Director of Communications Aloyce Ager downplayed the allegations, saying there was proper public participation.

He said he was ready to produce documentation for the entire budget-making process. “The Assembly will be going to the public to confirm if the elements in the budget are the same they proposed. It is during that time that they will interrogate the documents."