The Senate County Public Accounts Committee has called on the officers serving in the office of the Auditor-General (OAG) to be proactive and reorient their operations to be of value to county entities while carrying out auditing.
The Committee argues that the current adversarial approach in auditing must be abandoned and a friendlier tact adopted if the auditing process is to be of value and meaningful to public finance management.
“We reiterate that auditing should be more preventive and not the current state where it acts as a mortician,” said senator Moses Kajwang, who is the chairman of the committee.
He made the comments out of concern raised by Kisumu governor Anyang Nyong’o when he appeared before the committee to respond to audit queries raised by the Auditor General in the County’s financial accounts for the 2020/21 financial year.
Prof Nyong’o triggered the debate when he challenged the OAG to focus more on helping county entities get it right instead of waiting for mistakes to happen only to come and point them out when it is already a little too late.
“OAG should also advise county governments,” Nyong’o said after the OAG accused his administration of failing to provide critical documents related to the procurement and purchase of goods and services.
“They should step in and offer advice so that we focus on preventing the many missteps being seen in the management of public finances. We should abandon the adversarial system.”
The Auditor General had taken issue with the failure by the Kisumu county executive to provide documents in support of the queries raised in the report, with an expenditure of Sh5 million the county used to renovate the official residence of the Deputy Governor being one of the burning questions.
The auditor General established the Bills of Quantities were not signed, had no preparation date and tender reference numbers. The agreement did not disclose the contract timeframe and the contract amount.
The works of Sh5million were not supported by an inspection and acceptance report and letter of appointment of the inspection committee.
The County also irregularly purchased a bus but could not submit documents related to the deal.
Prof Nyong’o admitted that failure to produce the documents reflected badly on his administration and welcomed the proposal by the committee to bring in the EACC to help determine the authenticity of the documents that will be tabled.
“Whether it is the Auditor General, the National Treasury or the Office of Controller of Budget, we must all be proactive. We should be focused on prevention rather than being morticians. It is not a pleasant situation,” said Kajwang.
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