A week after Nyamira Governor Amos Nyaribo won a petition challenging his win in the 2022 General Election, the county chief is now facing a new hurdle after his Finance Executive was impeached by the County Assembly.
The Finance Executive Ms Emily Ongaga was impeached Thursday afternoon after a resolution by 33 out of 35 MCAs who were present in the house.
The legislators listed 16 reasons for her impeachment, noting that her docket had performed dismally and led to low development in the county.
The impeachment of Ms Ongaga is considered a blow for Mr Nyaribo only days after his win was affirmed by the Nyamira High Court.
Ms Ongaga is one of Nyaribo’s trusted executives and is said to have been categorically placed at the helm of the ministry at the heart of the Nyamira County Government operations.
Unsupported pending bills, unilaterally and illegally appointing an accounting officer to the County Public Service Board, discrimination, and skewed payments of salary arrears by some senior county leaders while ignoring the same request for payment of salary arrears by other county employees were among the issues listed.
Sabotaging county finance operations by not assigning roles of authority to County Chief Officers as account holders, failure to recover loans amounting to Sh 37 million which includes non-performing loans owed by serving and former nine executives and the late Governor John Nyagarama amounting to Sh20 million were among the issues raised by the MCAs.
Withdrawal of mortgage funds in the name of emergencies, failure to fully implement the Nyamira County Health Facility Improvement Fund(FiF) Act, failure to provide an updated statement of expenditures for Nyamira County Municipality and various funds and grants, and failure to meet statutory budget lines were among other reasons for impeachment.
Failure to honour county legal financial obligations, possible loss of funds to KRA through penalties, failure to enforce the Finance Bill and address the worrying issue of local revenue, and poor execution of budget with development expenditure currently at less than three percent were the other reasons for her impeachment.
Poor leadership as her department has no Director Revenue and Director Finance two years down the line and failure to have an ICT and Disposal of Public Assets Policy were also among the issues raised.
"The County Executive Committee member has revealed her incompetence by failure to effectively execute the Nyamira County budget whose development expenditure stands at less than 10 percent by the third quarter of the budget cycle leading to delayed development," Mr Minda said while prosecuting the motion before the Assembly.
The motion was seconded by Bogichora Ward Rep George Abuga who said the devolved unit had received no development since the inauguration of Mr Nyaribo's government.
According to Rigoma MCA Nyambega Gisesa, the motion should not be viewed as a fight against the Governor.
"We are fighting a serious problem in Nyaribo's government which is his Executive in charge of Finance. We have made him understand her misdoings and we hope he will side with us," Mr Gisesa said.
