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{
    "id": 1379427,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1379427/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 217,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Turkana East, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Nicholas Ng’ikor",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker, for giving me this chance. I rise to support the Report as tabled. I thank the Committee for the long hours they took while going through the reports on the 23 non-compliant State agencies. I also thank the Office of the Auditor-General for bringing out the concerns on the 23 State agencies to our Committee. What we saw when we invited those agencies one by one is not something that can be left to continue in this country. The reports we received from them were not guided by any law. About 16 of the agencies spent about Ksh4 billion in different years and yet, none of them reported on the accounts or forwarded any financial statements to the Office of the Auditor-General for audit. None of them! There are so many State agencies that are receiving taxpayers’ money through their parent Ministries but, instead, of using it as guided by the law, they use it and do not want to account for it. Some of them are like briefcase Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), self-help groups or women groups, which operate without being liable for audit at any given time. It was embarrassing for the agencies to express some of their issues to do with the money they received from their parent Ministries. Article 226 of the Constitution gives clear information that any State agency which receives taxpayers’ money is supposed to forward their books for audit to the Office of the Auditor-General. None of those 23 had done it for the years they had been operating. It is good that when such agencies are formed, their roles and mandates must be clear to guide them on the use of public resources they receive, for those resources to go to the right people and do the right work for the people of this country. When we were going through those reports, we found that the Ministries are also reluctant to follow up on the money which we approve in this House every financial year for every Ministry. They give money to those agencies but do not follow it up. It is our recommendation that this House has to have laws on how we can follow-up on that money. It is like we just budget this money for those Ministries and agencies to use it the way they want. As we were investigating those agencies, we found out that staff from the parent ministries are the ones running them. I do not know the law that gives them that mandate. This is because you cannot be an employee somewhere and, at the same time, be working for another institution unless you have been seconded to that institution. We interrogated them by asking for proof of being Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), but there were no documents that were tabled to support the same. They were just running the agencies for the sake of it because the money comes from the same Ministry. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor"
}