Vihiga county governor suspends county projects – Weekly Citizen

Vihiga county residents will be forced to wait for long to see development projects in their county after Governor Wilber Ottichilo suspended all development projects until the county pending bills running into billions of shillings are cleared.

Ottichilo while addressing the press at his office in Mbale said he has been forced to put on hold all county development projects to ensure all pending bills are settled as directed but the National treasury.

County assembly members are collecting signatures to impeach Ottichilo accusing him of abuse of office, wanton corruption, disobeying court orders, failing to settle pending bills and delay of release of salaries of county staff. Already 23 MCAs have appended their signatures to send Ottichilo home.

Vihiga MCAs

Ottichilo said that all the development money budgeted for in the 2019/20 financial year has now been allocated to pending bills. He added that the same has been stretched in next financial year 2020/21, where most of the allocation will still go to pending bills.

Ottichilo maintained that projects that will be undertaken by his administration will be donor funded.

“As a consequence of pending bills that we are forced to pay, I wish to share with the people of Vihiga County that, all money budgeted for in the 2019/20 financial year has now been allocated to pending bills. This will stretch to the next financial year 2020/21, where most of the allocation will still go to pending bills. Therefore, the only option left for development will be conditional grants from national government and donor support from development partners,” said Ottichilo.

Ottichilo who defended his move said the payment of Vihiga county historical pending bills was a directive from the National Treasury.

He said county government of Vihiga has acknowledged the existence of pending bills and in order to facilitate payment of the same, an audit was carried out by the office of the Auditor General.

He said the audit revealed that, the county has Sh1.1 billion of eligible pending bills to be settled and Sh800 million ineligible bills.

He said part of the money Sh139 million requested for payment of pending bills has been processed and is now available to settle some of the verified bills.

He noted that the Sh450 million budgeted for to settle pending historical bills cannot be released as a block disclosing that what has been released is Sh139 million.

He said the rest will be released in tranches every month as per the approved and verified documentation.

“For clarification and point of information to all affected creditors. Not all pending bills will be paid at a go, it will be a process that will take some time. Further, treasury has now agreed to allow us to carry forward pending bills to the next financial year budget. This financial year, there is no money above the Sh450 million set aside for pending bills,” he said.

Ottichilo said all the historical pending bills will continue being paid throughout this and the next financial year asking those affected to continue to be patient because this is the best available option if they are to clear these bills.

Ottichilo said to save the stalemate, it was agreed that payment of staff salaries not be tied to pending bills and it is for this reason that staff in the county who had missed their salaries have received their January salaries.