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{
    "id": 1545936,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1545936/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 39,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "County, 50 or 52 per cent. They are all abusing the requirements of the PFM. Can this House resolve that we stop transfer of funds for counties that cannot be fiscally responsible until they bring a recovery action plan as required under Article 225 and subsequent legislation? That is the decision of the House. We have made those recommendations. Could this House bring back the fiscal responsibility index in the formula for revenue allocation? We used to have a two per cent. Right now, only 11 counties are spending less than 35 per cent on wage bill. Why can we not give them a fiscal incentive so that others can also work towards achieving the same? Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, a further fiduciary risk that has been identified across all the reports is legal fees. It was in the headlines of yesterday's publications. I do not need to say a lot about it. Legal fees have become the new conduit for embezzling public funds. County governments are also not disclosing their contingent liabilities. So, you find that you step into office as a governor, you do not know what litigation is in court against the entity and someone just springs up with a court order. We have seen cases where people have sprung up with awards of one billion shillings and upwards. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, in regards to this issue of legal fees, perhaps we need a multi-stakeholder approach. This is one area that I would be requesting that the accountability committees could sit together with the Justice, Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee to get to the bottom of this rot and mess as far as legal fees is concerned. We have also cited issues of professional negligence. We have taken the position that if an accountant who is a member of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants and is in good standing prepares financial statements that are disregarded by the Auditor- General, that professional should not hold office and be reported to the relevant professional body for disciplinary action. That does not apply only to the accountants. There are other regulated professions like members of the Institute of Procurement, Institute of Human Resource Management and members of the Law Society of Kenya. We have made various proposals. You might see in the case of your county that we are recommending that those who prepare the financial statements should be disciplined by their professional bodies. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, allow me to spend a minute to talk about systems used in county governments. We have a system called Integrated Financial Management Information Systems (IFMIS); that is extremely porous. IFMIS is an oracle-based system, the platform that runs major core banking software and huge e-commerce applications across the world. In Kenya, IFMIS is porous by design. People have built backdoors into IFMIS. County Government are using IFMIS more like a suggestion rather than as a rule. The PFM Act requires the National Treasury to define and prescribe a system of financial management for counties. Counties can use IFMIS and have accepted to use IFMIS even though they do not use it properly. However, they draw the line when it comes to revenue collection systems. They can use one system from the National Treasury for financial reporting. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}