Uriri Member of Parliament (MP), Mark Nyamita, has urged County governments, to fully digitise their revenue collection systems, to minimise revenue misuse and leakage and optimise revenue collection.
While speaking to his constituents in Uriri, Nyamita said that counties need to improve their own sources of revenue, to ease the money burden that they expect from the Exchequer.
The Legislator noted that a lot of money generated through County and National revenue goes to pay workers; adding to that, the ballooning wage bill cannot be sustained anymore.
He encouraged the counties to come up with creative mechanisms to generate more wealth for the implementation of developmental programmes.
“Let our counties be creative in policy formulation and implementation to generate wealth to benefit the residents and boost the social-economic development of the country,” said Nyamita.
In March this year, the Chairperson of the Migori County Revenue Authority Board, Tom Kasera, said that the County’s ordinary Own Source Revenue (OSR), had increased after sealing some of the revenue leakages.
He, however, attributed the revenue leakages to the usage of the manual system, disclosing that only 20 to 30 per cent is remitted by the County Revenue Fund (CRF).
According to the official, the County is in the process of working towards 100 per cent automation, which will help seal any revenue leakages in the future.
In recent years, the country has seen a notable reduction from 51 per cent to the current 46 per cent of the public wage bill.
It is projected that the public sector wage bill can be reduced even further to 35 per cent by 2027, a year sooner than was agreed at the recently concluded Third Wage Bill Conference.
However, some of the outlined joint efforts between the National and County governments facilitated by the Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee, the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC), and the Council of Governors, will help to address the wage bill issue through shared responsibility and vision, cracking down on fake credentials, streamlining the workforce, and leveraging on technology.
Nyamita expounded that it was time for the counties to streamline their activities and prioritise agendas to create room for meaningful development through a well-streamlined and productive workforce.
By Geoffrey Makokha
