Contractors who supplied goods and services to Homa Bay county government have petitioned the devolved unit to settle over Sh480 million owed to them.
The chairperson of Homa Bay County Contractors Association Collins Omito said the debts had been accumulated by the county government since 2013.
Omito said that the county government had been sluggish in settling the pending bills.
The chairperson spoke to the press in Homa Bay town on Sunday accompanied by the Association’s Secretary General Kennedy Aloso, Organisation Secretary Peter Brown and Patron Peter Oyata.
The officials gave the county government a one-week ultimatum to pay them.
Aloso lamented that the county government was noncommittal on when it will settle the debts.
“We have pushed for the recovery of our debts but our efforts have not yielded any fruits. Sometimes they settle small amounts for the merchants while others are not paid at all,” Aloso said.
They said the situation had made life difficult for them because they were defaulting on loans they borrowed to fund the contracts.
Omito said that some of them are unable to pay their children’s school fees and feed their families.
“We are giving the county government one week to pay us or give a clear commitment on how we will be paid,” Omito said.
They appealed to Homa Bay Senator Moses Kajwang to intervene and push the county government to pay them.
“Kajwang is very vocal on issues affecting other counties but he is quiet on ours. We appeal to him to intervene and help us as the chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee in the Senate,” Brown said.
However, the Homa Bay County Executive for Finance Solomon Obiero accused the contractors of misleading the public that the county government was not paying them.
He said they had been paying contractors promptly whenever they received capitation funds from the National Government since Governor Gladys Wanga came to office in 2022.
“We have been paying both past pending bills and the current ones hence it is a lie for someone to say they had not been paid since 2013,” Obiero said.
He said they inherited pending bills of over Sh1.5 billion when they came to power in 2022 but their administration had reduced the bills significantly.
“There is no government that does not have pending bills. We will engage the contractors so that we address their grievances,” Obiero added.
By Davis Langat
