Murang’a County Governor Irungu Kang’ata has called out an alleged irregularity in the calculations of pending bills as presented by the Assumption of Office Committee.
The Governor claims the Committee presented an amount less by KSh 1.2 billion.
According to Kang’ata, the committee’s pending bills totaled Ksh 1.5 billion, but their assessment revealed that the county owed more than KSh 2.7 billion.
Kang’ata said during a verification exercise of the audit of the pending bills that only genuine bills will be paid.
He established the task force committee, which includes professionals from law, procurement, and accounting, among others, after the county administration received approval from the office of the auditor general to proceed with the auditing of the bills.
“In this exercise to verify the bills, genuine documents are needed and we will extend the exercise up to Monday so we give every supplier time to present the required papers.” Kang’ata said.
He urged the county’s indebted individuals to provide legitimate documents and warned them against fabrication and corruption.
“We are just doing authentication of bills accrued from the financial year 2020/2021 and 2021 to 2022. The bills for years before this were verified by the office of auditor general,” he added.
Kang’ata instructed suppliers who are dissatisfied with the results of the verification to file an appeal with the appropriate government institutions. The governor stated that he is out to ensure that there are no outstanding bills in the county, and that contractors and service providers under his administration would always be paid as soon as their work is completed.
“We are planning to digitalize all the operations in the county and this will ensure things are done promptly,” Kang’ata remarked.
He further stated that the auditing phase will take around 30 days, following which the validated bills will be revealed.
The audit committee’s chairman, John Kamau, stated that they are just analyzing the documents to determine their legitimacy.
Some of the contractors who showed up stated that their bills had gone unpaid for years, causing them to lose their property to auction because they had taken out bank loans to undertake the job. They said that even after finishing the task and receiving a certificate of completion from the county government, the procurement office continued to avoid them.