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{
    "id": 1050064,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1050064/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 270,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Prof.) Ongeri",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 124,
        "legal_name": "Samson Kegeo Ongeri",
        "slug": "samson-ongeri"
    },
    "content": "There were two counties; that is Kajiado and Trans Nzoia with two or three verifications we wanted to do in the field before completing that report. That would have made a total of about 3,200 pages of the report that would have come before this Senate. I seriously recommend that every Senator should look at their own county and see what kinds of recommendations have been made as part of their follow up and oversight of responsibility. This is so that they can help this House to track some of the issues that have been raised, fundamentally dealt with and recommended in one way or the other. Either the issues were resolved completely or the were outstanding were noted. One notable feature is that some of the audit queries need not appear as audit queries if the county executives were to submit their documents on time. When the audit period lapsed, they were not able to respond to the audit queries that have been raised during the exit meeting. Therefore, they were caught up in between that period. The issues then appear as audit queries. If they were to be diligent in replying to some of these audit queries, then we would not see them appearing in the report by the Auditor-General on respective counties. I urge the governors to exercise due diligence and due governance on their County Executive Committee Members (CECM) of Finance, and the people who are charged with the responsibility of preparing the accounts checked by the Auditor- General. They should submit the information available on time. Even when we are to meet and have given them a two or three-week window of opportunity to present the reports so that we can clear the audit queries, they have not been doing so. That is an area of weakness that we need to tighten as a House, so that when governors appear before the Committee, they have actually presented their full documents and information required during the period of audit. The other thing that was quite evident and which many Members have attributed to is poor bookkeeping. The audit is based on the financial statements. An audit report and opinion is derived from a financial statement. The statement is developed by the respective county governments. It is not developed by anybody else. Financial statements are basically the basic bookkeeping. That is where the opinion is derived from. I think that is one of the lapses we have noticed appearing frequently in most of the counties whose audit reports we have examined."
}