Nyandarua county residents risk losing over Sh. 350 million as county assembly members delay passage of the budget which was presented in late April by the executive. This comes on the heels of another budgetary penalty of Sh. 155 million from the Fuel Levy Fund which the county missed last year over similar delays occasioned by the assembly.
The 41 members of the county assembly have been holding meetings at Sawela Lodge in Naivasha for the last two weeks where, according to insiders who sought anonymity, all manner of demands have been made. An MCA who has been in the meetings noted that “while it is right for us as the representatives of the people to push our agenda for inclusion into this final budget, what my colleagues are doing is nothing but extortion.”
The Public Finance Management Act, the law guiding management of public resources, stipulates very strict timelines on budget making where the executive has to table the budgetary estimates to the county assembly by end of April, for eventual passage and assent before 30th June.
Failure to adhere to the timelines leads to severe financial penalties where should the current trend continue the county will have lost over half a billion shillings through delayed enactment. Efforts by our team to get comments from the chair budget committee Isaac Kung’u were unsuccessful as calls went unanswered.
Last year, the Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o initially rejected a total of 26 budget estimates from counties which had failed to keep within timelines with 18 more facing serious financial cuts, among them Nyandarua.
Among the issues that caused the delay in the Nyandarua’s 2025/2026 budget was an attempt by the MCAs to unilaterally plan for Sh. 371 million which the senate allocated Nyandarua as part of equalization fund and which, according to our sources, members of the county assembly budget committee “allocated themselves, some taking as much as Sh. 91 million, while some of us got less than Sh. 5 million yet we are all elected by the same voters.” This misallocation was later corrected through a supplementary budget.
It is all eyes now as residents wait to see whether similar gimmicks will result in further loss of expected grants and allocation as MCAs gear up for elections.
