National Assembly approves additional cash for underfunded police functions
The allocation of the Sh2.5 billion to the mission raises questions as the UN Trust Fund created to support the mission has met its costs and has enough to last till around September this year.
The National Assembly has approved a request by the Committee on Administration and Internal Security for additional funding to cater to critically underfunded areas such as food and rations, training expenses and police communication equipment.
This is according to the report of the Liaison Committee on the supplementary budget that notes that police operations remained severely underfunded in the current financial year ending June, having received a revised budget of Sh5.3 million.
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"Other critically underfunded areas included food and ration by Sh1.4 million, purchase of police communication equipment by Sh200 million and training expenses by Sh432 million among others," the report shows.
The report further notes that there was need for resources to be re-allocated to the police service that had not expended money on the development expenditure which has a budgetary allocation of Sh35 million for public participation projects.
"These projects include the construction of a police post at Ochoria in Muhoroni, construction of Obunga police camp and the construction of a police station office block in Kikambuni," the report says.
Priority areas
Last year, the National Police Service laid out its priority areas in the ongoing plans to institute major reforms in the service. They include strengthening National Integrated Security Surveillance System, equipping the national police forensic laboratory, and enhancing officers' tools of trade all in alignment with former Chief Justice David Maraga's recommendations on reforms at the police and prison service.
However, due to funding constraints, some of the priority areas may have to take a back seat as observed with the budget cuts.
The committee chaired by Deputy Speaker Glady Boss warned that the increase in overall expenditure in the mini-budget is not matched by a commensurate increase in revenue collection.
According to the report, the security sector has been allocated an additional Sh7.5 billion, Sh5 billion of which will address shortfalls in insurance costs and Sh2.5 billion will support the Haiti peacekeeping mission.
However, the allocation of the Sh2.5 billion to the mission raises questions as the United Nations Trust Fund created to support the mission has met its costs and has enough to last till around September this year.
The report shows that the National Intelligence Service has been allocated an extra Sh9.8 billion for security related operations while the Ministry of Defence gets an additional Sh6 billion that will mostly settle pending bills.
On its part, the Office of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions gets an additional Sh30 million to support the rollout of the Uadilifu Case Management System in all the 47 counties to enhance its digitisation programme.
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