[File, Standard]Members of the county assembly have started investigating how City Hall spent Sh48 million on a beautification exercise ahead of President Barack Obama's and Pope Francis’s visit to Kenya in 2015. The Auditor General has revealed a Sh48 million overdraft in one of City Hall’s Co-operative Bank accounts. On Thursday last week, the Wilfred Odala-led Public Accounts Committee questioned City Hall’s finance department on why the county undertook the exercise twice, citing waste of public resources. “We got authorisation from the national government to spend the money and it was to be refunded,” observed Alumasi. He further explained that the money was not captured in the budget, but payment of the beautification contractors had been prioritised to ensure a scenic world-class city ahead of Obama’s historic visit.

Source: Standard Digital February 27, 2018 05:15 UTC