President William Ruto has said his administration will not borrow to fund civil servants' salaries amid boycott threats in bid to push the Treasury to release the government workers' pay.
Thousands of public service employees are yet to receive their March salaries and some county government workers are owed up to three months’ worth of pay.
“We are not going to borrow money to pay salaries,” the President said on Tuesday.
Governors have protested at failure by the Treasury to release money to the counties for the fourth consecutive month since December. By end of March, counties said they were owed Sh122.1 billion, with governors blaming the withheld cash for their failure to pay county workers’ salaries.
The counties are owed Sh29.6 billion for December, Sh31.45 billion for January and February each, and Sh29.6 billion for March.
This is the longest period that the devolved units have gone without receiving their equitable share of revenue from Treasury.
The Ruto administration had pledged to cut recurrent budget by Sh300 billion to bring “our country to sanity” where the State does not borrow to “finance recurrent expenditure”.
