Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko has defended his performance record for 2019 amid the backlash from the residents over the city’s leadership crisis.
On his Facebook page on the eve of the new year, Sonko outlined his key achievements of 2019, including the awards that he and his County government received, despite the alleged ‘smear campaign to make his leadership and administration look bogus’.
“Our detractors some of them through a press conference released in parliament reported that there was massive corruption left, right, centre which saw our own source revenue decrease to 7.9B which was a biggest lie and propaganda of the year in a public live Tv,” Sonko said.
According to the troubled county chief, the wage bill reduced by an impressive 7.4% to KSh 13.74 billion in 2018/2019, down from KSh 14.84 billion in the 2017/2018 FY.
“In the 2018/19 FY, our overall development expenditure more than doubled to 5.9 billion shillings, up from the 2.18 billion shillings spent in the previous year. Our overall development budget absorption rate stood at 78%, placing us among the top five counties in development budget implementation, and at 100% for the Ward Development Fund,” he added.
Sonko, who is facing 19 graft and mismanagement of public funds charges, ironically praised his efforts to fight corruption in the capital.
“According to the EACC National Ethics and Corruption Survey 2018 Report, for the first time Nairobi was not among the top 20 most corrupt counties, with residents recording improved infrastructure and service delivery,” he said.
“For many years, City Hall was known to be the home of “ghost workers” where thousands of people, including the dead, used to earn salaries running into Billions of shillings every year. However, for the first time since independence, we launched the Biometric system that weeded out nonexistent staff, albeit amidst massive resistance. My administration remains committed to maintaining lean and efficient workforce that can deliver timely and quality services to the great people of Nairobi.”
Despite the governor coming under fire from a number of Nairobi residents over the pothole and drainage menace, lauded his efforts of improving the city’s road infrastructure around the city.
“To demonstrate our commitment to improve the dilapidated road infrastructure in Nairobi, my administration disbursed 800 million shillings to the Kenya Urban Roads Authority in the FY 2018/19. This amount was increased to 1.5 billion in the current financial year. This is over and above our internal road infrastructure development investment to ensure more roads are done within the shortest time possible. So far, my administration has done over 123 kilometres of roads in the last two years, and hundreds more are earmarked in the next two financial years,” Sonko posted.
Among the awards the county boss outlined include; a medal awarded by the “Director General of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for his efforts to recover grabbed land at the Kariokor War Memorial site” and Volunteer Champion of the Year Award in recognition of “his efforts to make a difference in the lives of the less fortunate in the society in his personal capacity, besides being the governor.”