Parliament questions ‘insensible’ Health Ministry expenditure

Senators on Tuesday grilled top Ministry of Health (MoH) officials over an increase in expenditure against the ministry’s budgetary allocation for the current financial year ending June.

Appearing before the Senate Health Committee led by Chairperson Jackson Mandago, the officials were tasked with explaining how the ministry’s recurrent expenditure had shot up by 98 per cent despite uncompleted projects and a request for additional funding in the new financial year.

“These figures don’t make sense; you have huge pending bills. You have not completed this financial year’s projects but want to carry out more in the next year. Why not look for money to complete them first?” Mandago posed.

The Principal Secretary of the State Department for Medical Services attributed the increase to presidential directives and programs they run like supporting needy persons.

But Mandago criticised the reason as “irrelevant,” saying such functions fall under the county governments’ docket.

According to PS Kimtai, MoH’s budget grew from Ksh.118 billion to Ksh.204 billion across the Medical Services and Public Health and Professional Standards state departments.

Kimtai said his Medical Services department had seen an increase of Ksh.80 billion, mainly because of the inclusion of the recently rolled out Social Health Authority (SHA)’s budget in the docket.

“For the first time, SHA has been domesticated in our budget, which has led to a growth of Ksh.76 billion,” the PS told senators.

However, Narok Senator Ledama Ole Kina flagged “unnecessary spending” at MoH which he observed needs action. He said the introduction of SHA “does not hold any water… because SHA was supposed to be almost semi-autonomous."

“The 98 per cent increase does not make sense; it opens an avenue for misuse of government money,” the senator said.

Ole Kina said MoH has been spending national government money on devolved functions under counties.

“The Ksh.990 million being budgeted for by MoH towards building health facilities is totally misguided. That money should be sent to county governments,” he said.

Alongside PS Kimtai before the senate committee were his  Public Health and Professional Standards counterpart Mary Muthoni and their boss, Health Cabinet Secretary Deborah Barasa.