By Martin Masai
The public exchange between comedian and businessman Sammy Kioko and the Machakos County Government over a claimed Kes 19 million debt has peeled back the curtain on a deeper fiscal problem — one that the Controller of Budget (COB) has already called a threat to the county’s financial stability and integrity.
While Finance CECM Catherine Mutanu insists that Kioko’s claim is “baseless, politically engineered and unsupported by documentation,” she is well aware that the debt he is speaking about- whether his or whoever’s is yet to be paid.
For the county is aware that Kioko is merely umplifying the call for payment of a long standing debt of uniforms supplied to the county inspectorate to dress the first cohort of youth who passed out from Governor Wavinya Ndeti’s fabled Machakos Youth Service.
Even with Mutanu’s denial, the COB’s latest review of the county’s 2025/26 budget reveals a system riddled with weak controls, poor planning and unresolved arrears that have eroded supplier confidence.
The COB found that Machakos continues to carry forward ballooning pending bills without a structured plan to settle them. These debts are not just numbers on paper; they represent real businesses left stranded, schools and hospitals waiting for supplies, and contractors unable to meet obligations because government payments never came.
The watchdog warned that the failure to clear old obligations has become a direct threat to service delivery and a breach of fiscal guidelines.
The problem runs deeper than unpaid invoices. The COB report shows that the county’s wage bill cannot sustain a full-year payroll, leaving little room to clear arrears or finance essential services.
In such a climate, claims of adherence to procurement law sound hollow. Legal compliance matters little when the treasury itself cannot fund basic obligations.
The fiscal picture is further distorted by misclassified spending, where recurrent costs were tucked into the development budget under the label of “capital formation.”
It is the kind of creative accounting that presents an illusion of growth while masking structural weakness. For residents, the outcome is visible — projects stall while paper budgets flourish.
Revenue projections in the county’s estimates were also found to be unrealistic and unsupported by clear strategies.
This habit of inflating expected collections to justify spending plans has left the county living beyond its means.
When such targets inevitably collapse, administrators turn to shifting funds or postponing supplier payments, deepening the same cycle of debt and mistrust.
Perhaps most damning is the COB’s finding that Machakos has ignored previous recommendations meant to restore fiscal order.
The report describes the corrective measures provided by the administration as vague, lacking both timelines and accountability structures.
This is no longer a bookkeeping problem but a governance one — a consistent pattern of brushing aside oversight and failing to act.
Seen against this backdrop, the Finance Minister’s argument that the Kioko claim is a political stunt appears less convincing.
Whether or not his specific case meets legal standards of proof, it mirrors a wider pattern of delayed, disputed and undocumented obligations that has come to define the county’s financial behaviour. The result is a public trust deficit that no press statement like Mutanu’s- can repair.
Machakos now stands at a crossroads. To restore credibility, it must publish a verified register of pending bills, align its budget to realistic revenue targets and honour oversight by the Controller of Budget.
The numbers do not lie. Behind the noise of one disputed payment lies a county drowning in commitments it can no longer meet — and a public growing weary of excuses.
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