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{
"id": 1507448,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1507448/?format=api",
"text_counter": 203,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Kikuyu, UDA",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Hon. Deputy Speaker, I beg to move: THAT, the Public Audit (Amendment) Bill, (National Assembly Bill No.4 of 2024), be now read a Second Time. The Public Audit (Amendment) Bill, (National Assembly Bill No.4 of 2024), seeks to amend the Public Audit Act on the basis of a court ruling filed by Transparency International versus the Attorney-General & 2 Others of 2018, Petition No.388 of 2016, that sought to nullify certain Sections of the Public Audit Act Cap.412B on the basis that they were unconstitutional. In line with that, we published this Bill that seeks to rectify what the court found to be unconstitutional. I must take this opportunity to thank the Chairman of the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning in absentia, and all the members of the Committee for considering the amendment Bill and the report that they tabled in the House agreeing with many of the provisions. Some of the things that were found to be unconstitutional revolved around Sections 4(2), 8, 12, 17(1), 18, 27, 40, 42 and 70. Justice Mwita held that all those Sections of the Public Audit Act Cap.412B were inconsistent with and in contravention of the Constitution and were, therefore, invalid. Clause 2 of the Bill contains amendments to definitions of certain terms in alignment with the new proposals. Some of those new definitions are of terms such as “accounting officer”, “Auditor-General”, “effectiveness”, “lawful”, “public entity”, “Audit”, “disallowable expenditure”, “economy”, “efficiency”, “grant”, “irregular expenditure”, “Office of the Auditor-General”, “public money”, “public resources”, and “unauthorised expenditure”. Those definitions have a bearing on the issues that were touched on by the courts that were considered to be unconstitutional. In Clause 3 of the Bill, the Office of the Auditor-General is now being defined as comprising of the Auditor-General, who shall be the accounting officer, and the staff appointed by the Auditor-General. It is worth noting that Section 4(2) of the Public Audit Act was declared unconstitutional because it provided that the Office of the Auditor-General was to comprise of the Auditor-General as a statutory head, and other staff appointed by the Auditor- General, as may be delegated in Article 234 of the Constitution"
}