Ouko: Sh225m ‘lost’ at Mike Sonko's City Hall

An aerial view of City hall, Nairobi. [File, Standard]

The office of the Auditor General has questioned City Hall’s unauthorised expenditure amounting to Sh225.5 million.

In the latest audit for the 2016/17 financial year, Auditor General Edward Ouko has pointed at budgetary reallocations that cannot be explained.

Dr Ouko explained that in the period under review, the county undertook an expenditure of Sh6.4 billion. Of which Sh225.5 million was unauthorised.

“Included in this amount is a reallocation of Sh225,557,043 without the formal approval of the county assembly, hence being unauthorised expenditure,” the audit said.

“Consequently, the validity of the unauthorised expenditure cannot be confirmed.”

The finance and economic planning department, however, has defended the expenditure, explaining that some deposits were made into wrong accounts which was to blame for the mix up.

Control system

County Executive for Finance Allan Igambi said the county treasury was charged with supporting different departments as they implemented their budgets.

This is in order to ensure the budget was implemented as the county assembly approved.

“It is, however, observed that in the processing of payments by various departments, several payments were erroneously charged into the wrong accounts during the processing of the payments as a result of weaknesses in the internal control system,” said Mr Igambi.

He, however, explained that interventions had been made to correct the situation.

Part of what has been done is increasing the number of officers in order to strengthen the validation unit. He said that had enabled a proper functioning of the internal control system.

At the same time, Nairobi County is on the spot about the status of some projects that the Auditor General has described as stalled.

The projects are valued at Sh204.2 million. Ouko has explained that delayed payments to contractors had led them to abandon the projects.

One of the stalled projects, a perimetre wall at Mji wa Huruma, cost Sh16.8 million.