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{
    "id": 1545937,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1545937/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 40,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13162,
        "legal_name": "Moses Otieno Kajwang'",
        "slug": "moses-otieno-kajwang"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, when it comes to revenue collection systems, governors have decided that they do not want to be dictated to by the national Government because they want to buy their own little revenue collection systems that have algorithms that deposit money into their accounts. This House must resolve that the Auditor-General should do a special systems audit on the revenue collection systems across the counties. It came to our realisation that even as we are looking for a single revenue collection system, the Ministry of Information Communication and Technology (ICT) has built a system which currently Nairobi City County is using on a software as a service model. You do not have to spend Kshs70 million, which is the average cost of a system, to buy it. You are probably just renting space it sits on the cloud. Now, the National Treasury and Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) are trying to build another system. I hope it will not cost Kshs104 billion like the one for the health authorities. We must provide guidance that the Office of the Auditor-General has the capacity and a systems audit department to bring to this House a proper systems audit. Sometimes, it is sad that a vendor is blacklisted in one county and they go to work in another. I do recall that there was such a vendor in Nairobi in the last Parliament. This Senate made a resolution that the vendor was not fit to do business with the county government. He rushed to the next county and is now doing business in that county. We must bring effect to debarment of service providers who occasion loss of public resources. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the weakness of these systems reflects also on poor own-source revenue collection. Almost all the counties were unable to meet their own- source revenue targets. There are so many stories, but the underlying one is the weakness of systems. There is also the aspect of non-collection of property rates. When you tell the governors in some parts of the country to prepare a valuation roll, they will tell you that the land tenure system is such that people would not want to pay more or investors would be frightened. Kiambu and Nairobi City counties have had a problem in terms of updating their valuation roll. However, from the reports we have, Kisii County is missing out on Kshs546 million due to uncollected rates. Kitui County is missing out on Kshs1 billion Kenya, while Kajiado County is missing out on Kshs11.9 billion in terms of rates that could have been collected. They do not even need to revise their valuation roll. They just need to apply the current one, even though some of these, are collections in lieu of rates. Therefore, this Senate needs to provide a way forward to help these county governments to collect those obligations. As I wind up to allow Members to debate, the other fiduciary risk that we have analysed is on imprests. By the closure of the financial year, Kshs318 million of imprest was not accounted for across the county governments. Kilifi County was leading with Kshs90 million unaccounted for in the hands of officers. Remember by the time these reports come to the Senate, it is six months after the close of the financial period. So, the officers run to the Senate with boxes showing surrender vouchers and warrants and we ask where those items were during the audit. 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."
}