Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani. FILE PHOTO | NMG The Treasury is sitting on cash pile of Sh9.9 billion in donations from State agencies, voluntary salary cuts and money seized from graft lords amid rising coronavirus infections and a shortage of key medical kits in the counties.
Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani Thursday told Parliament that the idle cash includes Sh9.38 billion recovered from graft and money laundering cases as part of efforts to beef up the Covid-19 emergency fund.
The recoveries were by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) and the Assets Recovery Authority (ARA).
Donations comprise Sh215.9 million from voluntary pay cuts by public servants, including President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Cabinet secretaries, as well as another Sh300.9million in contributions from individuals and private firms.
The cash pile, which are sitting in accounts at the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) and the National Bank of Kenya (NBK), raises questions about the government’s strategy in deploying the funds raised for emergencies.
“I wish further to inform you that domestically through the Covid-19 Emergency Response Fund, we have mobilised Sh9.9 billion which has not been utilised to date,” Mr Yatani told the National Assembly’s Health committee last evening.
He also disclosed that the Treasury had so far received Sh134 billion for the fight against Covid-19 from various bilateral and multilateral development partners out of which Sh130.4 billion had already been disbursed, leaving a balance of Sh4.79 billion as at the end of financial year 2019/20.
“The balance will be utilised in the current financial year for continued Covid-19 pandemic interventions,” he said.
The Sh9.9 billion cash pile could offer a boost to the fight against the coronavirus especially at a time when several counties are racing to meet the target of 300 isolation beds set by President Uhuru Kenyatta as part of their preparedness for the infections surge as at July .
Kenya has been struggling in its quest to enhance testing for the virus due to a shortage of chemical reagents used in analysing samples extracted from nasal swabs in government laboratories. The devolved units had procured an accumulative total of 11,934 isolation beds across all the 47 county governments, out of which 26 had attained the target as at July 24.
Council of Governors (CoG) chairman Wycliffe Oparanya warned that the 20 counties would only be able to meet the target if the Treasury made cash available for […]