MPs decry under-funding of critical ministries, state agencies

Parliamentary Committee on Administration and Internal Security chair Gabriel Tongoyo. [Elvis Ogina, Standard]

The Parliamentary Committee on Administration and Internal Security has raised the red flag over the underfunding of critical departments in the government.

The committee pointed to the State Department for Performance and Delivery Management as having been underfunded despite playing a critical role in supervising the government's projects.

It has emerged that despite seeking a budgetary allocation of Sh1.4b, the newly created department received around Sh400m adversely affecting its operations.

This emerged when members of the committee met senior officers from the department in Lake Naivasha Resort for a fact-finding session.

The committee chair, Gabriel Tongoyo, committed to supporting the department funding requests to ensure that they met their mandates of supervising and monitoring government programs and initiatives.

"We have been informed that this critical department faces a shortage of staff, office space, and low funding, and this has impacted their daily operations," he said.

Tongoyo said adequate funding would ensure close monitoring and supervision of all ministry's targets and plans to ensure they are achieved on time while meeting all the quality standards.

The Narok West MP called for prudent utilization of allocated resources by sealing all loopholes that may lead to the wastage of funds and ensuring citizens get the value of services.

On her part, the PS in charge of the Ministry, Verovica Nduva, decried the huge budget deficit, which continued to derail the monitoring of national government development initiatives and programs.

She implored members of the committee to help bridge the huge deficit with an allocation of sh. 1.4 billion in the 2024/25 financial year to support its activities.

Nduva said adequate funding would enable the department to hire more staff and harmonize its operations to ensure government ministries delivered on their targets.

"This will help government agencies deliver under universal health, affordable Housing, Agriculture, Digital superhighway, and Environment and Climate change," she said.

Nduva lauded the success of performance road shows carried across all ministries, which helped review key achievements, commitment targets, and progress reports.

The PS noted that the government continued to accommodate performance contact, adding that the department continues to administer 453 contracts while calling for a collaboration arm whole of government approach to achieve key deliverables and drive growth.

"The performance roadshows helped review government revenue and expenditure ratio, pending bills, pending court cases, as well as progress of legislative agenda and policies", said the PS.