Governors and Members of the County Assemblies (MCAs) spent Sh16.2 billion in domestic and foreign trips in the 2018/2019 financial year, a new report by Controller of Budget (COB) shows.
The COB report reveals that last year's expenditure on travel rose by 42.6 per cent compared to the Sh11.36 billion spent on 2017/2018 financial year.
The lawmakers gobbled up Sh13.44 billion on domestic travel in 2018/19 FY compared Sh9.9 billion the spent in the previous year. On overseas trips, they spent Sh2.75 billion, nearly doubling what they used the previous year.
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The governors and ward reps spending on trips casts the spotlight on their increased appetite for public resources amid persistent calls for austerity measures.
Last month, the government through the National Treasury halted all bench-marking trips by ministries and their respective state departments in fresh austerity measures in bid to cut public spending.
In a circular dated September 26 dispatched to all Cabinet secretaries and accounting officers, acting National Treasury CS Ukur Yatani said the government had capped the number of officers in government delegations for foreign travel to a maximum of four.
“All bench-marking and study tours are immediately suspended until further notice. Delegations led by Cabinet Secretaries should not exceed four persons while those by principal secretaries/chief executives shall not exceed three members,” read part of the circular.
But the governors and their executives who have been on similar benchmarking tours Sh8 billion on domestic and Sh1.5 billion on foreign trips.
If shared among the county chiefs, the Sh9.7 billion spent on domestic and foreign travel, each of the 47 governors may have consumed Sh206 million in just 12 months on benchmarking trips.
On the other hand, ward reps and their Speakers used Sh5 billion on domestic travel and Sh1.3 billion on foreign trips.
This means that each of the country's 2,500 MCAs and 47 speakers pocketed an average of Sh2.9 million in the period under review.
