Rights groups in Baringo are up in arms over revelations by the Controller of Budget that 12 county executives and assembly members spent more than Sh46 million on foreign travel in the 2022/23 financial year.
One of the county executives spent Sh8 million on a trip to Singapore between January 30 and February 7 this year for intergovernmental leadership training.
According to the Controller of Budget report, another county assembly officer spent Sh7.2 million on travel to Turkey for a 'transformative' leadership forum on June 10, 2022.
The Controller of Budget also questioned another foreign trip by a county assembly officer to Singapore between January 8 and January 15, 2023, where Sh7.1 million was allegedly spent to attend training on governance and structural planning.
The report also cites one more assembly official who spent Sh6.3 million travelling to Arusha between May 27 and June 3, 2022 for training on servant leadership, among other similar cases.
The Civil Societies Forum is now calling on the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to investigate possible abuse of office and fraud, and for the county assembly and executive to publicly justify the expenditure.
The rights activists say Baringo County is grappling with underdevelopment, among other challenges, yet audit queries on foreign trips have been the norm since devolution began in 2013.
"The review of the audit queries shows that this practice has been recurring and is an ongoing concern, indicating that there is lack of integrity among county government officials and lack of prudence and utilisation of public resources," they said in a joint protest statement.
For example, they expressed concern that the county government is still struggling with water scarcity. According to the 2022 Demographic Survey, only 39 percent of households in Baringo have access to basic drinking water.
The situation is worse in Tiaty and parts of Baringo North and Baringo South, where 15 percent of households have access to the limited resource.
"In the 2021/2022 financial year, the office of the Auditor General queried up to Sh485 million for various violations ranging from lack of justifications for foreign travels, lack of approval by the accounting officers, lack of surrender documents, lack of back to office reports and missing payment vouchers," the Civil Societies Forum said.
"Based on the water project cost, it takes close to Sh7 million to drill a borehole and supply water to at least 100 households. If Sh485 million was spent on drilling and equipping of boreholes in Tiaty, more than 70 would have been drilled."
The group urged the EACC to swing into action and investigate possible malpractices and fraud in the budget lines.
They also called on the Senate Public Accounts Committee to demand answers to the audit questions and recommend appropriate action.
“The county assembly and the executive should also provide justification for the expenditure, name the individuals involved, and enumerate the actions taken to address the audit queries as well as measures put in place to prevent the malpractice from recurring in future,” they said.
If no immediate action is taken, they said, they will seek redress through public protests, public interest litigation and recall proceedings against the county assembly for failing to provide effective oversight and abetting corruption and abuse of office.
In April this year, Governor Benjamin Cheboi also came under sharp criticism from locals who complained that he had been travelling too much since taking office, yet they expected him to serve them.
Mr Ezekiel Kipsoi, a resident, complained that the governor had become a tourist while people at home were dying of hunger and bandit attacks.
On a two-week trip abroad, the governor toured Korea from March 11 to 18 and later accompanied President William Ruto on another tour to Germany from March 27 to April 1.
The county boss had justified the trips by saying he was privileged to meet friends and development partners who were keen to assist in initiating several projects in the region.
"Partnerships and linkages are not only about locals. It's about us and national government institutions, us and development partners, friends from beyond and [across] borders," the governor had said.
In August 2018, former Baringo governor Stanley Kiptis also came under fire for "unnecessary" foreign trips that cost millions of taxpayers' money with little to show for it. The county boss made five foreign trips in 2017, barely a year after he took office.
But the former governor had defended himself against the allegations, saying Baringo residents would soon enjoy the fruits of the trips.
