By Antynet Ford
Nairobi City County is planning to employ an additional 46 lawyers as a top-up to the current 26 as a move to address legally inflated bills.
This was announced by Sakaja after a meeting with the Law Society of Kenya members Nairobi Branch in a new partnership with LSK.
Governor Sakaja stated that each sector needs a legal counsel hence the need to employ more layers through the partnership with LSK.
“Every sector within the county government needs legal counsel. Litigation, conveyancing, contracting, compliance, and legislative affairs need proper legal counsel.” Sakaja said.
The city administrator added that the lawyers will look into the huge approximately Sh 21 million legal pending bill.
Despite having twenty-six legal representatives employed by the county, Nairobi has been out-sourcing lawyers leading to a staggering Sh 21 billion debt owed to 843 as per the auditor general report for the period that ended June 2023.
According to the AG report for 2022/23, the Nairobi City County government owes legal firms Sh 10.7 billion to eleven law firms which is more than what was collected in the financial period that ended in June 2023.
This exceeds the capital’s source revenue for the same period which was 10.6 meaning if the county would decide to pay the debt, they would go for two years without offering services to Nairobians.
The payment of legal fees has remained a thorn in the flesh for city hall even in the past administrations where a committee was formed just as Sakaja did this year to check on the legality of the payments and plans for taking care of them.
In January 2021, the Ethics Anti-Corruption Commission commenced investigations on the payment of legal fees to 26 law firms by City Hall.
The county assembly has over time lamented and raised concerns over money paid to legal firms with at some point a motion being passed to help over the same but has never been implemented to date.
In 2022, Sakaja formed a 12-member committee led by Advocate Kamotho Waiganjo and Sylvia Mueni Kassanga as the Vice Chairperson to review and verify the then Sh 2.1 billion for legal services that were yet to be paid.
The committee however never presented the report as the court termed it unconstitutional.
In June 2023, the Controller of Budget Margret Nyakang’o declined the request by City Hall to approve Sh 1.3 billion as payment of legal fees.
She said the given schedule for nineteen firms did not include the dates for the invoices and therefore she was unable to ascertain whether they were pending bills to work done and invoiced in the current financial year.
“Please provide a clarification on the issues to enable my office to facilitate the requisition because it is difficult to match the proposed payments with the pending bill’s report presented earlier.” She said.
Read also:- Nairobi County Budget Committee Ejects Nairobi Water Officials Over Ksh 2.3 Billion Loan Dispute
In the AG report, Gathungu raises queries on why Sakaja prioritized payment of legal firms over other bills that have been long overdue.
Fraudulent legal fee claims on public institutions have become the new frontier for corruption.
