COMMENTARY

By Martin Masai

COB Exposes Litany of  Machakos Budget  Failures, Showing  Wavinya’s Government on the Brink

The Controller of Budget (COB) has torn apart Machakos County’s 2025/26 financial blueprint, exposing Governor Wavinya Ndeti’s administration as a government living on borrowed time.

The action by COB has now become an emblem of official evidence that matters are worse than what Governor Wavinya Ndeti spends hefty amounts of money to portray. It exposes the administration’s hollow promises, undelined by bold creative accounting.

In a damning letter addressed to Finance Minister Onesmus Kuyu — a person already notorious for fiscal recklessness — the COB laid bare a budget that is neither realistic nor lawful.

It comes as Governor Wavinya continues to evade appearing at the Senate’s Public Accounts Committee since November last year to answer similar accountability issues facing the county.

Wage Bill Chaos: Workers Left Hanging

The COB confirmed what has long been whispered in county corridors: Machakos can not pay its workers for a full year under the approved estimates.

Even with half-baked “measures” proposed by the executive, the budget still leaves gaping salary arrears. For a county where over 50% of the budget is swallowed by the wage bill, this signals an impending paralysis in public service delivery.

Teachers in ECDE centres, health workers, and casual staff risk months of unpaid labour — a social time bomb in a county already grappling with strikes in the health sector.

Development Budget Turned Into Shopping Festival

Instead of prioritizing water projects, roads, and healthcare facilities for citizens as procrastinated in her Chakula Mezani,Pesa Mfukoni mantra, the Wavinya administration slipped in recurrent luxuries under the development budget: cars, furniture, emergency fund allocations, even household appliances.

This gross misclassification violates national public finance principles. It also reveals a government more focused on comfort and consumption than on actual service delivery.

The scandal raises a fundamental question: how many hospitals could have been equipped, or how many boreholes drilled, with the millions now diverted into “capital formation” shopping lists?

Fantasy Revenues, Real Debts

The COB’s verdict on Own Source Revenue (OSR) is a story Machakos residents know too well. For years, successive budgets have been anchored on inflated revenue projections, while actual collections lag behind. The result? Mountains of unpaid bills to contractors, stalled projects, and a reputation for fiscal deceit.

In 2024/25 alone, Machakos rolled over Kshs. 2.38 billion in pending bills. Instead of breaking the cycle, Wavinya’s team has entrenched it, allocating Kshs. 533.3 million to pending bills this year while creating new obligations that will almost certainly go unpaid.

Governance Crisis: Oversight or Cover-Up?

This rebuke by the COB lands at a time when relations between the county executive and the assembly are poisoned by mistrust.

Speaker Ann Kiusya has been on a collision course with Governor Wavinya, accusing her of undermining oversight and shielding a bloated, unaccountable executive.

The COB’s findings now hand the assembly ammunition: evidence that the budget passed under Governor Wavinya’s watch is riddled with irregularities and blind spots. Whether MCAs rise to the moment or opt for political deals remains to be seen.

The Bigger Picture: County in Decline

What emerges from the COB’s intervention is not just a flawed budget, but a failing system of governance in Machakos.

The county is unable to live within its means, unable to pay workers on time, unable to prioritize development over consumption, and unable to stop digging the hole of debt.

Finance Minister Onesmus Kuyu — long accused of arrogance and incompetence — is now officially the symbol of fiscal malpractice. Governor Wavinya’s silence in the face of these indictments raises uncomfortable questions about whether she is complicit or simply out of her depth.

For residents, the implications are stark: stalled projects, unpaid workers, ballooning debt, and a government consumed by internal battles rather than service delivery.

Scathing Verdict

The COB’s letter is more than bureaucratic housekeeping; it is a scathing indictment of Machakos’ political leadership.

It exposes a county where promises outpace resources, where books are cooked to satisfy egos, both the people and authorities, and where accountability is indeed an afterthought.

Machakos, once hailed as a model of devolution, is now staring at fiscal ruin — unless radical accountability is enforced.
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