This archive report was first published on 2 July 2019.
On Madaraka Day, President Uhuru Kenyatta directed government ministries and counties to pay all pending bills by the end of June, aiming to clear the mess in public finances and bring relief to contractors and suppliers whose businesses have been affected by delayed payments.
However, this directive has provided an opportunity for looters to scheme and steal from the public coffers. A report by the Auditor-General Edward Ouko revealed that counties exaggerated pending bills by up to Sh60 billion, which money would be released but then channelled into the pockets of a few devious characters.
Ordinarily, counties complain of inadequate funding, which impacts negatively on service delivery. But when a remedy is being sought, where the government purposes to pay the unpaid bills and relieve counties of their liabilities, that exercise is muddied by conniving characters hell-bent on stealing.
Even so, this scheme is not peculiar to counties; it cuts across ministries and departments. We ask that the Auditor-General expand the scope of inquiry to include other units to save the government huge sums of money.
While we push for prompt payment of all unpaid bills, we call for further investigations to verify all of them to ensure that only genuine ones are cleared. Else, there is a risk of turning pending bills into a cash cow and an avenue for defrauding the public.
