Nairobi County employees working under the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) will have to wait longer to pocket their monthly salaries.
Some 6,800 under NMS have not received their September salaries, and might also not be getting their October salaries if the current stalemate between Governor Mike Sonko and NMS boss Major General Mohammed Badi is anything to go by.
The supremacy battle between Sonko and Badi has caused NMS employees to go without salaries indefinitely, the root of the problem is the dispute between NMS and City Hall over employees’ payroll.
Badi has requested Sonko to handover the staff payroll to enable him pay staff seconded to NMS.
The Nairobi governor however maintains that he is the sole custodian of the staff payroll, since the role of payment of salaries still lies with the Nairobi County government.
National Treasury can’t release funds to Nairobi county until the dispute between NMS and Nairobi County government is resolved.
While responding to Badi’s request to release funds, National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani explained that there was no legal framework in place to facilitate such a transaction and that the funds can only be remitted to the Nairobi County Government (NCCG) Revenue Fund Account and not to NMS.
Yatani pointed out that Section 4(2) of County Allocation of Revenue Act (CARA), 2020 which provides that each county governments’ allocation shall be transferred to the respective County Revenue Fund, in accordance with a payment schedule approved by the senate and published in the Kenya gazette by the CS, in accordance with section 17 of PFM Act, 2012.
In the meanwhile, some 6,800 employees of Nairobi County working under the NMS will have to go without salaries indefinitely, until Sonko and Badi resolve their differences.
