Reports lamenting outrageous County government spending have been a hot debate after Kiambu County Governor Ferdinand Waititu came on the spot over fictitious allocations.
His budget which had Peace-keeping in South Sudan, StateHouse budget and Handshake budgets were met with a public outcry from both members of the public and the media.
However, a new angle has emerged in the puzzle showing how the IFMIS budgets could have been manipulated by administrators based in Nairobi.
In 2018 January, Laikipia County government complained to the IFMIS director, Mr Stanley Kamanguya, after the system showed contaminated budgets that did not represent the actual spending at the county.
“Further, some of the programmes and sub-programmes do not have narratives despite having some huge figures in them. This implies that the pullout is not reliable, realistic and relevant to the county,” read the correspondence from Paul Njenga, the Laikipia County Finance and Economic Planning Chief Officer
Mr Kamanguya would respond later in February of the 22nd, noting that the errors had been corrected, and that the remaining errors should be fixed by county finance officials.
“After review of your report, we noted there was a configuration issue under Laikipia County in the system resulting in the errors in the reports. This has since been rectified. Please find the attached copies of the trial balance and vote book reports for the affected vote for your confirmation. Please note that the unaccounted transactions in the system should be cleared by your officers,” Kamanguya wrote.
Wednesday, the Council of Governors went all out to dismiss the county fiscal reports, and instead asking the government to explain the whereabouts of the monies indicated to have been spent.
“Since the county governments did not use the money stated in the erroneous report, who spent it? Is someone somewhere looting counties’ funds through doctored entries?” Oparanya posed.