The Council of Governors has suspended appearance of its members before Senate's Public Account's Committee, citing lack of respect.
CoG in a statement questioned the powers of the Senate to summon governors, saying it was usurping the oversight role of county assemblies.
Chairman of the council and Meru Governor Peter Munya said the Senate was using PAC as a political forum to gain political capital.
“Their power to sermon is questionable and we have even questioned it in a court of law and the court pronounced itself on this matter, the Governor is the last person to be summoned after all officers and the Senate is not following this. Therefore, we are suspending appearances to the Senate as Governors until these issues are addressed,” said Munya.
The governor also clarified that counties were allocated Sh259 billion in 2015/2016 and not Sh288 billion as published by one of the local dailies.
Munya dismissed reports that the devolved units had no capacity to absorb funds allocated to them and collected as revenue.
“On the contrary county governments in the 1st and 2nd quarters FY 2015/16 on the development vote had spent 32 billion out of the released amount of 37 billion accounting for 86%. For recurrent expenditure in the same two quarters the county governments on recurrent costs spend 80B against the released sources of 89.44B accounting for 88%. The national government in the same two quarters utilized 166.2 Billion on development which is 23% absorption rate but 84% of the released amount. In the recurrent expenditure in the same two quarters 518B was utilized which comprised of 288B for MDAs and 230B for consolidated fund services.”