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The Anchor Comment

For three years, Machakos County has operated its hospitals without Boards of Management — a governance void that is not by accident but by design. It is a deliberate vacuum, carefully maintained to facilitate the sweeping of hospital revenues into the county treasury, away from the eyes of oversight and the touch of accountability.

This is the same period during which the Controller of Budget (COB) has repeatedly flagged Machakos for its casual handling of public funds — from the unexplained diversions of Own Source Revenue to the lack of clear frameworks for the Facility Improvement Fund (FIF). The COB’s letter earlier this year laid it bare: Machakos has been budgeting in chaos, spending without structure, and treating oversight as an inconvenience.

Now, the consequences have come home to roost. Patients at Machakos Level Five are missing dialysis sessions, while hospital accounts sitting fat with unspent millions are swept clean— money held hostage by a treasury that knows no shame.

Governor Wavinya Ndeti’s recent inauguration of the Pioneer Audit Committee this week would have been commendable — had it not come three years too late and in the shadow of a failing health system. Her administration speaks of integrity and transparency even as hospitals are stripped of governance organs, and medical officers reduced to beggars for operational funds.

An audit committee, noble as it may sound, can not sanitize a structure that thrives on opacity. Integrity begins where governance exists — in the hospital boards that approve budgets, in the Facility Improvement Fund that empowers institutions to manage their resources, and in the culture that separates service delivery from political manipulation as is the case in Machakos County.

The vacuum in Machakos is not administrative negligence; it is policy sabotage. It is what happens when power centralizes control of funds, disables internal checks, and weaponizes delay as a governance tool.

The COB’s indictment was not just an accounting concern. It was a warning that the county was bleeding from within — that systems meant to protect public money had been dismantled in favour of discretion and political control.

If Governor Wavinya seeks to prove that the new Audit Committee is more than a public relations exercise, she must start where her failures are loudest: in the hospitals. Reconstitute Boards of Management, operationalize the FIF, and stop the treasury raids.

Until then, every missing dialysis session, every unpaid supplier, every shuttered ward will stand as the true audit of her administration — written not in ledgers, but in the lives lost under her watch.

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Would you like me to prepare a boxed “Anchor Factbox” next — summarizing the COB letter highlights and the timeline of governance gaps (three-year delay, missing BOMs, SHA disbursement figures, and new Audit Committee inauguration)? It would complete the package for publication.

Routinely, Governor Wavinya Ndeti  never responds to invitations by The Anchor to comment on any issue we highlight- Editor

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