Kisii County Governor James Ongwae has distanced himself from the ongoing squabbles in the County Assembly over salary delays among the Assembly’s workers.
Ongwae said the County Assembly is the one that handles Assembly matters including employment and payment of workforce.
While addressing the Assembly workers who demonstrated to his office to get clarification and know their fate, the governor promised to communicate to them as soon as the taskforce finalises its findings.
“This is completely unacceptable because the affected persons were recruited by the County Assembly Service Board. The two arms of government, Executive and County Assembly operate as separate and independent arms of by virtue of their communications and therefore the speaker is the one who is in charge of the CASB that recruits employees,” he said.
“Consequently, the two arms of government have separate personnel emolument budgets. Therefore, the budget provision for employment in the Assembly is with the CASB,” clarified Ongwae.
He said he got interested in the matter as the CEO of the County and formed a joint taskforce comprising of members from both the County Assembly and the County Executive the report expected in his office once investigations are complete.
However, the governor said the Members of County Assembly should engage with the CASB to conclusively determine the direction the matter should take.
County Assembly workers have been complaining about their salaries since late last year. It was alleged that the County Assembly speaker who is the chairman to the CASB, about 400 workers, which was a contrary figure to the 70 workers who were to be employed.
The matter went to court and judgment is yet to be made over whether all the employees to the Assembly were legally recruited, or there are some who got the job through backdoor hiking the figure.