Services may suffer as Treasury fails to disburse funds to Bungoma
By YUSUF MASIBO.
Essential services may come to a halt in Bungoma County after Treasury failed to disburse December funds over pending bills.
A circular from Treasury, the county failed to pay pending bills and failed to present clear and eligible payment plan for its debts.
The county is among the 14 counties that missed out as the government disbursed which was released to only 33 counties on Wednesday which had paid their pending bills.
The issue may affect the county more after governor Wycliffe Wangamati vowed not to pay the pending bills amounting to 250 million.
Speaking during Jamhuri Day celebrations last year, the Governor cited that the previous leadership led by Kenneth Lusaka left pending bills that were not documented and cannot be paid.
Wangamati castigated Treasury CS Ukur Yatani for dramatising the issue of pending bills but instead dig deeper into the issue.
“On the issue of pending bills, the Treasury CS should dig deeper and realise that we cannot just clear ghost pending bills without credible details on how the contracts were awarded and performed,” Wangamati said.
“When I came to power, Bungoma had pending bills of about Sh1.2bn from the former regime. Up to now, we have managed to clear at least a billion and we are remaining with around Sh250 million.”
The Governor vowed not to clear ghost bills whose work and value cannot be traced or seen by the residents.
Any bankruptcy declaration on Bungoma may hurt the county’s development projects among them the 6.5km Musikoma dual-carriageway whose upgrade is already underway.
