Several employees of Kisumu County government have been ordered to surrender imprests totaling Sh. 99, 185,962.
Information obtained by KNA indicates that the imprests date back to 2014 but have not been surrendered as required by the Public Finance Management (PFM) Act which raised audit queries.
Kisumu County Executive Committee Member (CECM) for Finance and Economic Planning, George Okong’o had earlier through a letter dated March 28, 2022 raised concern over the risk of loss of public funds since some officers had already left service.
Okongo invoked the PFM County Regulations Sec 93(6) that allow the accounting officer to take action and recover full amounts from salaries of defaulting officers upon failure to account for the imprests on the due date.
Subsequently, he directed the accounting officers to start the process of recovering the huge amount of money from the affected officers this month.
As a result of this, there is growing anxiety among the workers who risk missing salaries from this month as the county government takes the bold move to implement the planned recovery.
The 380 officers including CECMs, Directors, Chief Officers, County and Ward administrators will have their outstanding balances recovered from the payroll immediately.
In a related development, the National Treasury through the Auditor General’s office revealed that 19 Ward and Sub- County Administrators also owe imprests ranging from Sh. 600, 000 to Sh.2 million.
In this regard, the National Treasury has with immediate effect ordered for recovery of the siphoned funds by Ward and County administrators totaling Sh. 60 million public funds out of the total amount.
The administrators are alleged to have been used as the conduit to siphon funds from the public coffers in the imprests scheme scandal.
Kisumu County Government Attorney and Legal Advisor to the Governor, Edris Omondi said in a letter dated April 25, 2022 that the officers are yet to honour the terms of subject order, a scenario that was in direct conflict with the principles of Public Finance.
