The leadership of Kakamega County has been strongly criticized by the County Public Accounts Committee for allocating KES 11 million for meal allowances for staff in the Governor’s office in the 2020-2021 financial year.

Chairing the scrutiny, Senator Moses Kajwang unleashed his disappointment, deeming the sum averaging KES 1 million per month as an unacceptable and unjustifiable misuse of taxpayers’ funds.

“This is not the reason why I’m going to fight the National Assembly to give counties KES 415 billion, so that governors can be allocating one million per month for food for their staff,” Kajwang said.

Demanding a granular breakdown, Kajwang questioned the number of staff that could warrant such an exorbitant food budget.

“We must resolve it, so that we dispel some notions that we are more interested in houseworks than in development,” Kajwang asserted, his remarks carrying undertones that such wasteful expenditures undermined public trust in county governments’ developmental agenda.

The Senator’s fiery rebuke tapped into longstanding grievances of national legislators who have often cited perceived misuse of funds as justification for denying or reducing county allocations. “Small things like this are then used by our brothers in the National Assembly to say that money in counties is wasted,” he remarked scathingly.

In an attempt to douse the raging flames, Governor Fernandes Barasa stated the county had audited the staffing inherited from the previous regime and initiated measures to rationalize the workforce.

“In terms of working on the numbers, we have actually given staff an opportunity for voluntary early retirement, which is one way of addressing the staff numbers,” Barasa responded. “The other approach is through natural attrition – as people retire, we don’t replace all those vacancies. We believe this will get the numbers down to a level that reduces pressure on the wage bill.”

Barasa added that the county had commenced a workload analysis to determine optimal staffing levels. “We don’t want a situation where a department that needs 5 staff has 10. We are trying to work within the numbers we have to maintain and even reduce the wage bill to manageable levels – a process that can continue until June.”