A lobby group sitting in a Kisii hotel on Wednesday blamed the Senate for alleged rampant corruption in counties in connection with the delay to come up with a legislation that could see county assembly’s handle their own budgets.
Kisii Open Governance group under the leadership of Mary Matara directed its fury to the Senate by saying it had directed contributed to increasing cases of corruption in developed units by failing to act swiftly to make county assembly and executive independent from each other.
Mrs Matara claimed that most MCAs were forced to sing to the tune of the assembly since the executive was controlling the finances and said the former also reverted to intimidating the executive if their requests were ignored.
“The menaces we are seeing in our county governments on corruption are synonymous. Senate was mandated to come up with a legislation that could see the assemblies handle their own budgets and so as the executive. The dependency of the assemblies to the executives is contributing significantly to corruption at the grassroots,” she said.
Deputy director Alfonse Momanyi on his part urged the Senate to expeditiously revisit the matter for effective future governance.
“The issue was in the Senate but we no longer hear Senators discussing it. It’s now upon its leadership to own the problems in our counties because the Senate is the custodian of county units. Continued dependency of the assembly on the executive will only make matters worse and could lead to high levels of corruption,” he added.
According to them, many MCAs were being manipulated by the executive to shield inefficiencies due to lack of separation of powers by legislation.
“Constitutionally, we are told those are two different entities but no legislation has been enacted to support it. The issue of the budget is the focal point here,” Momanyi added.