Former Information Communication Technology (ICT) and Innovation Principal Secretary (PS) Jerome Ochieng was put to task to explain why he accepted a nomination for a county job after a stint at the helm of a senior national government docket.
Market Milimani Ward MCA Seth Kanga said the position of County Executive Committee Member (CECM) for Lands, Housing, and Urban Planning, which the former PS has been nominated to fill by Kisumu Governor Prof. Anyang Nyong’o, was a junior position, questioning the former PS’s decision to take up the offer.
The MCA said Jerome, who was the Accounting Officer for the State Department of ICT and Innovation, was in charge of key national government projects worth billions of shillings, questioning how he was going to fit into a lesser portfolio with a budget of Sh500 million.
“You have been in charge of a State Department whose budget ran into billions of shillings, yet the county government of Kisumu only gets about Sh12 billion. Why are you opting to take up a lesser job than your previous position, yet we know civil servants move on an upward trajectory?” he asked.
Jerome told the vetting committee that his decision to accept the offer was based on his desire to serve the public and not necessarily his salary and portfolio.
“I describe myself as a career civil servant, and my focus is on service delivery. Even when I was PS, I made sure that we got projects that were of benefit to the people,” he said.
Jerome, who holds a Master’s degree in Information Engineering from the University of Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan, said he declined lucrative offers from mobile networking companies that wanted him to move owing to his quest to serve the public.
“I have had opportunities to get a higher salary in the private sector, but I declined because of my desire to serve the government. In fact, it was not my wish that I left the PS job. It was as a result of the political realignment. I have not reached retirement age, so I still have the energy to serve,” he said.
A 2019-2020 Auditor General’s report on the State Department of ICT and Innovation, which faulted the PS for lack of documentation and transparency in the management of projects, returned to haunt the former PS during the vetting exercise.
The MCAs demanded to know how the former PS was approved to take over the Lands Docket at the county government was going to account for the money allocated to the docket, yet previous records show that he was unable to do so while at the State Department of ICT.
However, Jerome defended himself, saying the issues raised in the Auditor General’s report were addressed and he was not to blame for the National Assembly.
The documents which the report indicated as missing, he said, were with the National Treasury since payments to contractors who were undertaking the projects were being done directly from The Treasury.
“The projects in the report you referred to were donor-funded and paid directly through the National Treasury. For the payments to be done, we had to submit the original copies of the documents to The National Treasury; therefore, at the time the audit was done, the documents had already been handed over to The Treasury,” he said.
Jerome’s role as the former Head of the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMIS) also played out at the vetting session, with the MCAs questioning the effectiveness of the system.
He told the committee that IFMIS was an effective tool in the management of public resources, adding that 70% of the system was operational.
If cleared by the committee to take over the docket, the former PS said his first assignment would be to operationalize the new municipalities established by the county government.
The new municipalities, which include Maseno, Ahero, Katito, and Muhoroni, shall be upgraded with the necessary infrastructure put in place to enhance service delivery.
He added that top on his agenda is to digitize operations and the land docket to ensure that members of the public have easy access to county government services.
“I was instrumental in the digitization of courts in Nairobi, Mombasa, and here in Kisumu. This experience and expertise is what I seek to bring to the land, housing, and urban development docket,” he said.
Kisumu County Assembly Speaker Elisha Oraro, who chaired the meeting, said the committee shall retreat to write a report to be tabled in the house for adoption.
By Chris Mahandara
