The Controller of Budget Mrs. Agnes Odhiambo who hails from Busia County has flagged the Counties of the former Western Province of Kakamega, Bungoma, Busia, Vihiga and Trans Nzoia County for skyrocketing wage bills, paying members of County Assemblies allowances beyond the ceiling set by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission.
If the MCAs who are constitutionally mandated to oversight County Governments are indulging in pilfering public resources in dubious or excessive allowances, useless trips in the guise of benchmarking, who then will safeguard the resources that were meant by devolution to go to the citizens of these Counties?
If the County Governments lead Governors have gone into an incestuous relationship with MCAs to plunder resources, who shall defend the ordinary citizens of the County who are hoodwinked by public relations gimmicks of giving painkillers in the names of bursaries, subsidized this or that? Some smoke here and there of some petty project being launched and many never completed.
The Senators of the Counties of the former Western Province are snoring on the job or they are also in cahoots with Governors and MCAs as they continue yapping, ranting, yelling about National Government issues as they forget their core mandate is to safeguard and protect devolution and which means the electorate. If County Governments and County Assemblies in their myopic, selfish pursuits turn County Governments, County Assemblies into employment institutions for their relatives, cronies, hangers-on, then by 2022 what would stop all County resources going to pay wages, salaries, allowances and recurrent expenditure that simply go to the comfort of those public servants and MCAs in the County? Development budgets of both the National and County Governments have been dwindling over the decades but with the most rapid decline since the onset of devolution.
The citizens of the Counties you are on your own, those elected to serve have now turned to serving themselves and their relatives and supporters and soon everything will go to themselves. All budgetary resources are plainly being consumed by elected leaders and public servants. What shall the electorate get to transform their lives, their children’s lives, their future?
Does it really make sense for elected leaders to be heard arguing that more resources out of the national budget should be sent to Counties? We ask so that those resources go to wages, allowances, recurrent expenditure? What nonsense, stupidity? If the County Government have not in six years understood that unless they facilitate local private enterprise to thrive as the engines of employment creation, then it does not matter how much money is pumped into them as they will remain a bottomless pit of corruption, waste, consumption to the detriment of the electorate. They have become the arena of the worst parasitism ever experienced in living memory. Even parasites eat from the principal just enough to ensure the principal continues to exist so as to provide the food for the parasite.
Where are Non-Governmental Organizations to wage the people’s war, to stop Counties from pilfering their resources in the name of wages, allowances and recurrent expenditure? The religious institutions must step forward and scrupulously hold Governors, Senators, MCAs, MPs responsible. Public servants have become cannibals consuming all resources entrusted to them to be stewards of the citizens of the County. Recurrent expenditure must be brought to less than 35% of the Budget of County Governments and County Assemblies if we have to start talking about development. Period.
