Leaky Kiambu county coffers bleed billions of shillings through fraud
Kiambu county government lost over Sh5 billion of its own revenue through looting by its own officers.
County Assembly Committee on Finance and Economic Planning says in a report that enforcement officers were not remitting revenue collected.
“As a committee we decided to go to the ground and find out how revenue is being collected.
We were shocked with what was going on as revenue was being pocketed by some county enforcement officers through cartels in the sub-county level,” said committee chair Samuel Kimani who is also the MCA for Kinoo.
Kimani said through a World Bank survey conducted on how much counties should get in their own source revenue revealed that Kiambu county has a capability of collecting Sh8 billion per year.
“Kiambu has a capability of collecting Sh8 billion in own source revenue but the much they have collected since devolution set in is a merger Sh2.9 billion.
We have a budget of Sh17 billion whereby the county is able to raise half of its budget in its own source revenue,” he said.
A member of the committee Wanjiku wa Kariuki (Nominated) said; “We visited some sub-counties and found out that those entrusted to collect revenue many of the officers were not working allowing a few who were active to pocket what they collect.”
Wanjiiku said Ruiru, Juja and Thika sub-counties are worse hit areas saying that while there were many areas where the county can make revenue like industries, businesses, quarries and emergence of real estates, what was being reported as revenue collection does not reflect what the economic activities on the ground can bring in.
“At a quarry the committee visited in Juja sub-county, we found out that money remitted to the county government by the enforcement officers was Sh60,000 but on that day money collected was Sh160,000, meaning that Sh100,000 went to the pockets of the county officers,” said Wanjiku.
