Nairobi — House Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wah has added his voice on reports of salary delays in government confirming March salaries for lawmakers in the bicameral Parliament were delayed for about a week.
Ichung’wah, while reacting to comments by his minority counterpart who suggested payment of salaries was still pending, stated on Saturday that lawmakers in the National Assembly and the Senate received their salaries on April 5 and 6.
He spoke even as government remained tight-lipped to on the scale of a cash crunch said to have affected several departments in government as President William Ruto’s administrations works to avert a debt crisis.
The Kikuyu Member of Parliament chided House Minority Leader Opiyo Wandayi advising him to check his account and find better ways of managing his debts.
Debt distress
Ichung’wah sarcastically suggested personal debts had wiped out Wandayi’s March salary.
“Maybe your salary was wiped out by personal debts like our national revenues are wiped out by that DEBT HOLE the handshake regime put us in,” he added.
Ichung’wah appeared to confirm a fiscal crisis in government albeit blaming it on President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration which enjoyed the political support of opposition leader Raila Odinga.
Earlier in the day, economist David Ndii who chairs Ruto’s Council of Economic Advisors confirmed that government was spending as much as 60 per cent of revenue on debt servicing.
Ndii said the National Treasury was grappling with “weekly maturities of domestic debt held by banks and pension funds”, obligations he said commulatively added up to 80 per cent of debt service.
The closely-spaced maturity of domestic debt combined with unpaid subsidies under Kenyatta’s administration, he said, had compounded the crisis.
Kenya debt to GDP ration had risen to a high of 69 per cent in 2022 before marginally declining to 67.6 per cent so far in 2023.
The opposition has however accused Ruto’s administration which has cut subsidy spending as part of a plan to scale down on debt accumulation of being insensitive to the needs of the public.
Some wondered why, even after dropping subsidies, government was unable to meet its obligations on payment of salaries.
In his comments on government’s liquidity situation, Wandayi had accused the Ruto administration of hiding from Kenyans the sad state of affairs that the country is in.
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Revenue audit
Wandayi called for an audit of the Kenya Revenue Authority’s (KRA) revenue collection and management systems to root out pilferage which he cited as the cause of the crises.
He blamed “criminals at KRA are collecting and pocketing taxes as the incompetents at the National Treasury also skim off the revenue while failing to come up with sound policies for cash flow.”
Wandayi said county governments were also struggling to pay salaries, a situation he said is posing a huge challenge to service delivery.
He suggested a parliamentary inquiry to interrogate the matter.
“We need to take a close look at the operations of individuals and systems at the National Treasury, the Central Bank of Kenya and the Kenya Revenue Authority and compel testimony and the production of documents with a view to establishing what has gone wrong,” he said.
Wandayi blamed corruption, tribalism, nepotism, incompetence and theft at critical revenue collection points and what he described as wrong spending priorities.
