City Hall receives Sh1bn Treasury advance for staff salaries

The Nairobi county government has received an advance of Sh1.021 billion from the Treasury to pay April salaries to avert planned strike for Wednesday.

County executive for finance Gregory Mwakanogo said that they had secured the advance following negotiations with the Treasury.

This came after the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) transferred Sh1 billion from the county government’s account to the taxman’s to cater for arrears, making it difficult to pay April salaries for its 13, 000 workers.

The Kenya County Government Workers Union last week gave the county an ultimatum to pay up the arrears by Tuesday or it would paralyse services at the county from Wednesday.

Mr Mwakanogo said that the workers would get their money on their accounts starting from Tuesday and Wednesday.

“The workers are been paid today and tomorrow we will have sorted all of them after we got an advance from Treasury,”said Mr Mwakanongo.

City Hall had on Monday asked the court to compel Kenya Revenue Authoriry (KRA) to reverse Sh1.07 billion transferred to its accounts by the CBK within 24 hours.

City Hall lawyer Tom Ojienda also sought directors of Central Bank and KRA to be jailed for ordering the transfer despite an existing court order barring such a move.

“In disobedience of the court order made for City Hall, KRA transferred salary of Nairobi City County employees for the month of April  hence we are looking for alternative ways to pay them,” he said.

City Hall maintains the transaction is illegal and is calculated at sabotaging as well as blackmailing the county government to outrageous uneconomically sustainable demands.