Kirinyaga MCAs Start Collecting Signatures To Dissolve County Gov’t After Declining To Approve Budget

Kirinyaga ward representatives are not letting up in their fight against the county governor Anne Waiguru.

The Members of the county Assembly have started collecting signatures to dissolve the county government.

According to the county Assembly majority leader, Kamau Murango, the signatures collecting exercise has kicked off in all the 24 wards.

The Kerugoya MCA said that they are striving to collect more than the required 3,000 signatures.

On his part, he said on Monday evening, he has collected at least 1,000 signatures so far.

The ward reps were responding to the governor who appealed to the controller of budget, Jubilee Party leadership, and the Senate to intervene after the former declined to pass the 2020/2021 budget.

Waiguru claimed that the MCAs dismissed the proposed budget and instead submitted a completely new budget with a variation of over 30%, going against the requirement of regulation 37(1) of the Public Finance (County Government ) Act, 2015 which limits the assembly variations to 1% of the set limits.

The embattled county chief vowed not to approve the altered budget. She alleged that the ward reps moved Sh300 million meant to pay salaries for health workers to construction of ward offices.

She also noted that the county Assembly got rid of Sh20 million meant for casual workers’ wages.

Further, she accused the MCAs of removing Sh58 million for payment of taxes to KRA from the initial budget. This, she said, will result in penalties.

“The assembly also removed Ksh.14.6 million meant for fueling ambulances, water bills and acquiring oxygen for Kirinyaga hospitals, and this is unacceptable since it means paralyzing operations in my health sector,” Waiguru added.

An irate Waiguru also said that some Sh59 million meant for legal fees to help her government in pursuing over 200 cases mostly on recovery of public lands and Sh30 million meant for payment of pending bills, were also struck out of the budget.

But MCAs who have in the past vowed to impeach the county boss as many times as possible, denied the allegations.

They said that she refused to follow advise as offered by the controller of budget.

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