Six finance officers have resigned from Kiambu County government over disagreement with Governor Ferdinand Waititu over county funds.
According to the officials, they resigned over Ksh900 million pending bills to county contractors.
The officers who quit include, chief finance officer Faith Harrison Njeru, four senior accountants and a procurement officer.
Their resignation followed a reshuffle of top county officers that Governor Waititu announced last Friday.
They accused the county boss of having a preferred list of companies, who had been awarded tenders, to be paid first and which the officers had resisted.
In his reshuffle, Waititu transferred Ms Harrison to the Trade and Tourism ministry, which she declined and consequently rendering her resignation.
She mentioned: “Yes it is true that together with a host of other finance officers from the department we decided to call it quits from the county government. The governor wanted us to first pay certain companies, to which we refused. We decided to resign instead of putting ourselves in problems.”
The officer further noted that they could not agree with the governor’s demands since there were several suppliers that did business with the county government in 2014, 2015 and 2016, but were yet to be paid.
She added: “The President recently said all contractors and suppliers with pending bills be paid, but the governor wants to hear none of it. He only wants companies he prefers paid first, which we found inappropriate.”
Harrison also accused the governor of micro-managing the Finance department, describing her experience working with the governor as a “night-mare”.
Following their resignation, the county appointed William Kimani, who was the chief officer administration, as the new chief officer in-charge of Finance and Economic Planning.
Kimani has been in charge of the youth rehabilitation programme dubbed Kaa Sober, a programme which is under investigation for spending of Ksh700 million of un-budgeted county funds.
