As the national continuous to sink deep in debt , Nairobi ward representatives have resorted to wasting public resources in their quest to line up their already fat pockets.
According to Auditor General Edward Ouko’s report for the year ended June tabled in Senate on Thursday, the loss misuse of resources is due to infighting between the MCAs and the speakers for the control of resources.
While in some counties it is due to the tribalism, unexplained discrepancies in the budget, expenditure, inflated car loans and mortgage.
In Nairobi county, for example, ranked number 13 of 22 most wasteful counties, Ouko noted that Sh70 million of Sh107 million paid to Lap Fund was not supported by payment vouchers.
In his report, he also denotes that Sh780 million paid to employees and Sh13 million spent on office and general supplies and services could not be confirmed.
The county assembly also spent Sh12.5 million in sitting allowances. Consequently, the county assembly spend Sh100.3 million in meetings instead of Sh88 million as budgeted.
The assembly after ousting Speaker Beatrice Elachi and under the leadership of Ngara MCA Chege Mwaura halted foreign travel by its members until next year as a result of a budget shortfall.
“We resolved to go slow on foreign trips after looking at the resources we have. It was a difficult decision but we saw the need to reorganise ourselves and focus on priorities,” Mwaura said.
Recently Nairobi MCAs impeached house speaker Beatrice Elachi in grounds of abuse of officewhere they allege the speaker inappropriately used public funds on dubious travel to Dallas, Texas, in the US.
While Ms Elachi said she in the US for a Diaspora women network conference, MCAs claim she was travelling for a plastic and knee surgery.
The reps said their surgery claim was backed by an insurance claim from CIC Insurance totalling Sh1 million, whose payment was similarly “procured through deceit and intimidation”.
She is also accused spending public funds on a visit to Dubai, UAE, to ostensibly receive “a fake honorary doctorate degree from the ‘London Graduate School’, which is affiliated to a ‘Commonwealth University’, a university suspiciously registered in Belize, a tiny country in central America, and run from Nigeria.
Ms Elachi is alleged to have paid a sum of Ksh550,000 of taxpayers’ monies, as part of a suspicious “Dubai Leadership Summit,” knowing fully aware the costly and fake degree was a ploy by “Nigerian fraudsters in what are commonly known as 419 scams”.
The MCAs also accused her of breaching Article 201(d) of the Constitution on prudent and responsible use of public resources, and Section 162 of the Public Finance Management Act, 2012, by inappropriately buying a First Class ticket to Texas, at Sh1,500,000 on May 23.