Kiambu County Government has passed a supplementary budget that allocated a total of Ksh440 million to pay MPs.
The Standard established that the budget, which was passed on Wednesday, set aside Ksh250 million for the basic salaries of MPs and another Ksh74 million for the National Assembly attendance allowances.
According to the budget, State hospitality will cost Ksh4 million, contribution to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association will cost Ksh500,000 and the county will incur another Ksh500,000 contribution to the African Parliamentary Association.
Kiambu County Assembly Members line up for a group photo outside the chambers
Ksh116 million was allocated to the office of the County Assembly Clerk as being basic salaries for MPs.
Also listed in the same category is Ksh2.5 million for the purchase of police security equipment.
When contacted, County Assembly Majority Leader Antony Ikonya claimed it was another template mistake.
The capacity of county governments to use record and report budget documents have come under question after mistakes from the same county were highlighted in the Senate when Governor Ferdinand Waititu appeared to answer to queries.
An audit report for the year ending June 2018, claimed that the county had allocated funds for State House functions including paying retired presidents, peacekeeping in South Sudan and free primary education.
It later came to the light that 10 other counties had made similar errors in their budget reports.
Auditor General Edward Ouko, however, cleared the counties over the ridiculous budgeting.
“It is just an issue of bad reporting or the information was slotted into a template which was not customised for that particular reporting of the county budget, so you end up with some budget heads from a template of the national government budget. It is not an issue of whether the counties spent money on those items, no,” Ouko stated.
“I think you have systems of accounting and then there is subsidiary reporting which is supposed to be done on the budget separately and meant to go to the County Assembly and this was really intended by the Treasury to allow the counties once they have the accounts, they align the budget heads,” he added.
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