Tana River,KENYA:Tana River county government might face a challenge in accomplishing its first year developmental agenda as almost a half of its budget goes to debts inherited from the past government.
Speaking to press on Friday, county governor major (Rtd) Dhadho Godhana said that his government has a debt of sh.2 Billion carried forward from the previous regime.
Mr. Godhana added that his government will pay all debts that he mentioned to be legal and to do inspection for other debts before payment is done.
He insisted that those debts that were acquired through office management were genuine, but any debt got through contracts should not be paid until auditing is made to them to be put clear if the tenders followed procurement norms.
According to him (governor), the debt rose from sh. 1.9 billion to sh. 2 billionafter other inclusion of other projects which had not been recorded in the list brought by the committee which dealt with the inspection.
Similarly, Mr. Godhana said the committee involved in the process was given more time to accomplish its work before an evaluation is done to know their fate.
“I received the report from the committee which previously was sh. 1.9 billion but apart from what was in that report in the evening, again it’s reported that the debt was sh. 2 billion.” Said Godhana.
“All debts belonging to recurrent issues are genuine but those for development projects are not genuine until evaluation is over,” Mr Godhana added.
On the other hand, Tana River county assembly speaker Mr. Justin Michael Nkaduda added that the 2017/2018 budget could not be passed before being corrected as it’s full of fake projects.
Mr Nkaduda confirmed to the public that some projects had been repeated of which he mentioned it to be null and void.
“We did some correction in the budget before we passed it because many of the projects which appeared in past budgetary years were in the list and we judged it as misuse of public resources,” Mr. Nkaduda said.
Already, the county assembly passed a budget of over sh. 5 billion where according to county assembly chairman for budget committee Mr Sammy Malibe, 52% of the budget will be set aside for recurrent funds while 48% will be for development funds.
