Documents tabled before the Senate County Public Accounts Committee show that taxpayers in Homabay county could have lost millions of shillings after it emerged that top county officials hired casuals to collect revenue instead of contracted county workers.
The documents show that after the casuals made the collections, they were paid 10 per cent of the total amount they collected. The deployment of the officers across the county occasioned a sharp decline in revenue collection from Sh232 million to Sh101 million.
Governor Cyprian Awiti while appearing before the senate committee yesterday could not explain the process that was used to hire the casuals.
It also emerged that some of the money the county collected was spent without banking.
The county collected Sh40.4 million from public health services but spent Sh10.8 million at source, against regulations guiding revenue collection.
The documents tabled before the watchdog committee chaired by Senator Moses Kajwang’ (Homa Bay) shows that the county collected Sh232 million in the 2014-15 financial year.
The figure dipped in the 2015-16 financial year to Sh192 million before plummeting further to Sh144 million in the 2016-17 financial year. In 2017-18, the county collected only Sh101 million.
Awiti was also on the spot over Sh742 million pending bills raised in the Auditor General’s report.
