President William Ruto has warned Members of Parliament against misusing the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) as they might not be re-elected.
Speaking at the 20th anniversary of the NG-CDF which took place at safari park hotel in Nairobi Ruto urged members of the public not to re-elect those found culpable as a way of holding them accountable.
“The people of Kenya have elected you, you have a salary of Ksh1 million and then the money meant for the bursary of their children, money meant for the education of their children wewe umeenda kuhangaika nayo mpaka imepotea,”
“Because CDF puts at your disposal close to Ksh600 million in your term of five years. Friends, with Ksh600 million, if you cannot win in an election then wewe ni bure kabisa,” Ruto stated.
Over the past few months, there have been squabbles over the release and use of NG-CDF.
According to MP’s, the treasury has failed to allocate the funds despite the Speaker of the National Assembly Moses Wetangula stating that they would be allocated the funds by December 20th,2023.
The MPs lamented over the constant delays stating that it highly affected students who relied on bursaries for their education.
“No single cent has been dispersed in this respect with the consequence that pupils and students are stranded all over the country. CDF allocation should be Ksh.63 billion, we should have received at least 75% of the money by now which is around Ksh43 billion, but to date we haven’t received anything despite some utterances that you may have heard elsewhere,” stated MP Otiende Amollo.
In February, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission(EACC) had arrested five suspects who are alleged to have illegally acquired Ksh 20.3 million from Laikipia East NG-CDF.
The money was supposedly for a road project in the financial year 2016/2017.
The EACC confirmed that there was no such project that had taken place and the money was suspected to have been shared by other senior government officials.
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