The Transition Authority (TA) says cars, land and computers were never transferred to county governments.
This means that taxpayers lost millions of shillings in assets during the transition from the local authorities to the 47 counties after March 2013 elections.
The Transition Authority (TA) has revealed that assets like land, cars and property owned by local authorities were never transferred to county governments.
It said the lack of property registers had made it difficult to establish the correct identity of the assets.
This means that taxpayers lost millions of shillings in assets during the transition from the local authorities to the 47 counties after elections in March last year as the country adopted the devolved system of governance.
“There were no comprehensive assets registers in most of the defunct local authorities,” said TA in its September report.
Officials working for the defunct local authorities are believed to have stolen cars and laptops and sold houses and land despite a government directive to the authorities against disposing public assets within their custody during the transition.
“Some of the motor vehicles that belonged to the local authorities could not be physically verified, while some of the logbooks were registered under different names other than the defunct local authorities, including to individuals, organisations and banks,” the report says.
TA said some of the computers had been vandalised and most laptops could not be located.
“There are cases where members of the defunct local authorities are presumed to have taken laptops and computers and never returned them,” said the report. These findings are based on a pilot study of 13 counties including Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Machakos, Kakamega, Kiambu and Kisii.
The study teams comprised four to six members drawn from the TA, office of the Auditor General, ministry of Devolution, National Land Commission and Commission on Revenue Allocation.
Land belonging to the local authorities was used as security for bank loans by individuals. TA warned it will be extremely difficult to transfer many parcels of land to county governments in the absence of title deeds.
The authority also says there are many plots owned by defunct local authorities that have not been surveyed or fenced, exposing them to encroachment and court battles over ownership.
It notes a case where a plot that was initially occupied by a residential unit belonging to a defunct local authority was razed down by fire and in its place a house was built, owned and occupied by an individual.
The authority wants an independent auditor appointed to trace the liabilities of the defunct local authorities. It added that the liabilities are not supported by documents such as invoices, demand notes and certificates of acceptance of goods and services.
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