Pay suppliers, but all bills must be genuine

When President Uhuru Kenyatta, on Madaraka Day, directed government ministries and counties to pay all pending bills by the end of June, everybody was upbeat that this would clear the mess in public finances.

Further, it would bring to an end a lengthy nightmare for contractors and suppliers whose businesses have been demolished by delayed payments. Indeed, it is the right thing to do for a government that believes in prudent financial management and good governance.

However, this seems to have provided an avenue for looters to scheme to steal from the public coffers.

A report we published at the weekend presented a vexatious plot by county officials to loot from the taxpayers by inflating the pending bills.

While it is immoral enough for the officials to delay paying those who have rendered services to an organisation, it is doubly wicked for them to use that opportunity to bloat the figures for selfish gain.

The report by the Auditor-General Edward Ouko shows that counties exaggerated pending bills by up to Sh60 billion, which money would be released but then channelled into pockets of a few devious characters.

Ordinarily, counties complain of inadequate funding, which point we have canvassed on several occasions because it impacts negatively on service delivery. But when a remedy is being sought, where the government purposes to pay the unpaid bills and relieve counties of their liabilities, that exercise is muddied by conniving characters hell-bent on stealing. All the good intentions by the government are turned on the head and made to serve different and also selfish interests.

Even so, this scheme is not peculiar to counties; it cuts across ministries and departments. Which is why we ask that the Auditor-General expand the scope of inquiry to include other units.

Notably, delays occasioned by further scrutiny of the bills across other units may halt payments for those genuinely owed cash and add to their pain. But the action is necessary to save the government huge sums of money. It does not make sense to pay for the sake of it only for the cash to go into people’s pockets.

Looked at broadly, this represents a wider manoeuvre to steal billions of shillings from the government every year. The delay in paying suppliers and contractors may, sometimes, not necessarily be a consequence of inadequate funding per se but a perverted strategy to create an opportunity for plunder of public resources.

While we push for prompt payment of all unpaid bills, we call for further investigations to verify all of them to ensure that only genuine ones are cleared. Else, there is a risk of turning pending bills into a cash cow and an avenue for defrauding the public.