The County Assemblies Forum (CAF) has denied misappropriating shs 98 million last year during the MCAs legislative summit in Mombasa.
The summit was held on 20th to 25th May 2018.
Several MCAs drawn from different Counties have threatened to boycott this year’s CAF summit scheduled for Kisumu next month.
They said if the CAF executive committee does not clear the mystery surrounding the expenditure of the money, they will not be used to rubber stamp “theft”.
This year’s summit will be held at Royal Swiss Hotel, Kisumu from 14th to 18th April 2018.
During the summit, the MCAs with the Senators come together to review the legislative agenda.
Speaking to Hot News, the MCAs said that CAF cannot account for shs 98 million it spent in five days during the conference in Mombasa.
The governing council allowances were shs 1.2 million per day, CAF secretariat Personnel emoluments 1.008million, transportation of CAF staff, facilitator and summit materials shs 653,206, hire of exhibition tents shs 445,440 and facilitation fees for summit moderators 157,894.
The total amount spent during the summit was 98 million shillings which the MCAs say is too much and a waste of public resources.
The MCAs said they will write to the EACC and the DCI to investigate the matter.
However, CAF through its treasurer, Kilifi County Assembly speaker Jimmy Kahindi dismissed the claims as “pure propaganda”.
He said the executive committee of CAF approves all spending and that no shilling was lost.
Kahindi told Hot News that Internal wrangles and supremacy battles have rocked the forum and are to blame for the “lies” being peddled.
He said some MCAs have been trying to coerce the executive committee to give them money and that after they were unsuccessful, they resorted to tarnishing CAF’s management image.
“Our records are very clear. They will only realize at the end that they have tarnished our names yet even if the investigating agencies carried out investigations, they will find nothing,” Kahindi said.
CAF chairperson, Kajiado County Assembly Speaker Johnson Osoi could not be reached for comment as he did not answer calls nor respond to text messages.
According to CAF, its primary responsibility is to strengthen the capacities of the Speakers and members of County Assemblies so that they can perform their duties effectively.
“The main objectives of the #LegSum2019 will be; To assess the progress made in legislation that support entrenching of devolution; To identify the gaps and challenges in legislation that are impeding devolution and develop measures to address them,” CAF posted on its facebook page.
Currently, there are 1450 elected MCAs and 772 nominated MCAs bringing the total number to 2,222 .