President Uhuru Kenyatta’s home county is experiencing complete paralysis of service delivery after governor James Nyoro refused to authorise withdrawal of cash from county bank accounts.
The impasse has been occasioned by political feuds between Nyoro and Kiambu County Assembly Speaker Stephen Ndichu is associated to Jubilee Party and United Democratic Alliance (UDA) contest.
Nyoro has starved the assembly cash to punish Speaker Ndichu politically who is allied to Deputy President William Ruto’s UDA but the real victims of these turf wars are Kiambu residents who are being denied critical services, suppliers and service providers owed tens of millions.
The dire situation has left residents, and County Assembly creditors agonising over non-payment of pending and current bills amounting to tens of millions as Nyoro and Ndichu flex muscles.
On Monday, creditors owed by the county government and residents of Kiambu County have organised a demonstration to be staged outside Jubilee Party headquarters in Pangani, Nairobi to seek party’s intervention to prevail upon the governor to pay current and pending bills.
Kiambu residents will also march to Harambee House to petition Office of the President to intervene to ensure resumption of service delivery.
“The situation being experienced in Kiambu County is dire and requires urgent intervention from President Uhuru Kenyatta himself. Juvenile fights between the governor and Speaker should never be allowed to carry the day as residents are being denied services they deserve and are entitled to as taxpayers in this country. It is very unfortunate. Even us at the county headquarters we feel this is wrong. Wananchi are not politicians and should not be made to suffer because of fights meant to satisfy people’s ego.” A senior administrator from governor’s office lamented.
The County Assembly of Kiambu has been running without operational budget of critical services.
They only get salaries for assembly staff without any running budget even to run official administrative functions.
Effectively, the assembly is unable to run both recurrent and development expenditure which has left the assembly technically grounded.
“Everyone is stuck and we cannot move because we have no money even to run simple administrative functions.” Another source intimated.