Nakuru County Governor Kinuthia Mbugua has come out to dispute the World Bank report blaming the country’s inflated wage bill for the poor development rating that was just recently released to the public.
Mbugua claimed that most of the counties struggling at the bottom of the list are struggling with wage bills, as they took in a lot of employees from former local authorities.
“Nakuru County inherited about 4000 workers from Naivasha, Nakuru, and Molo municipal councils. A majority of our funds go to salaries and there is very little that we can do about that,” he said
He further added that close to Sh5 million was spent on salaries in the county, which comes to 51 percent of the total budget allocated to the county.
Mbugua also went further to dispute the World Bank statistics, which state that expenditure on development, was at 15.3 percent and not 8 per cent as was indicate.
“My administrations development vote allocated 29 per cent of its budget for development before the government took back Sh 1.3 billion,” he said
He added that about Sh588 million that was allocated for development in 2013/14 financial year was received in late June, 2014 while the year closed a few days later.