MCAs now want to grill NMS officers on funds allocated

Members of County Assembly (MCAs) now want Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) officials to appear before various committees to respond to queries on expenditure of its allocations.

The ward representatives raised concerns that the Major General Mohamed Badi-led agency had failed to submit quarterly reports for the past nine months as is required by law.

Nairobi County Assembly Budget and Appropriation committee chairperson Robert Mbatia said that nine months into the current financial year ending June 30, 2021, NMS is yet to submit quarterly budgetary reports in line with the provisions of the Deed of Transfer of Functions and the County Allocation of Revenue Act (CARA).

He said the reports are vital, especially in budget-making process for the respective committees whose sectors were transferred and the lack of submission of the reports has made it difficult for the committee to know how the individual allocations for each of the transferred function have been affected.

Four county functions of transport, health, public works, utilities and ancillary services, as well as county planning and development services, were transferred to NMS last year February. NMS officers have been appearing before different Parliamentary committees to respond to expenditure queries.

“As much as NMS is under the Office of the President, we are following the law as per the Deed of transfer and CARA, 2020. NMS should therefore furnish the committee with a breakdown of utilisation of funds allocated to for the current financial year,” said Mr Mbatia.

In the current financial year, the county assembly allocated Sh27.1 billion to NMS for the transferred county functions.

The budget committee chair observed that “canons of public finance management” places considerable premium on financial accountability as it does on resource allocations.

As such, he said entities must put in the same effort they do to bid for resources in accounting for the resources granted in order to help sectorial committees track implementation and absorption of the transferred resources.

Section 7 (4) of CARA, 2020 states that the National Treasury CS, in instances where a county government has transferred functions to the national government, shall prepare quarterly reports on expenditure of funds in respect of the transferred functions and submit the same to the Senate, National Assembly and the respective County Assembly.

The Deed on the other hand states that to ensure the effective running of the four departments, the Nairobi Parliament and the county assembly will be required to form joint committees tasked with keeping the operations of the four dockets in check.