Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 549801,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/549801/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 332,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "The Senate Minority Leader",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": " Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, Clause 8(b) gives the office of the Auditor-General the mandate to recruit and promote qualified and competent staff to perform the functions of the office. I am very happy that my distinguished friend, Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr., will be bringing our amendments here. It is not enough to recruit and promote competent staff. It must also have adequate staff because you can have two or three competent and qualified staff who cannot do the overwhelming work that is available for them. We will bring an amendment to say “qualified, competent and adequate staff” so that the office can function. I agree in the same clause that the Auditor-General should have the power to exercise disciplinary control over staff, develop his human resource and so on and so forth. Something very dangerous in this Bill that this House must take care of is not to subject the Office of the Auditor-General to the rigmaroles and all the funny happenings that we see from the office of our lady called Ms. Sarah Serem of the SRC. That office behaves like what President Museveni once said of immigration officers. That they think their duty is to prevent people from travelling instead of facilitating people to travel. The office of the SRC thinks only in very cheap and limited phraseology and philosophy of shillings and cents. They do not know something called “value for money.” They do not even appreciate it. If we will have the office of the Auditor General hiring adequate and competent staff to audit, discover, expose, name and shame fraudsters in our midst, the staff must be beyond reproach and be properly remunerated. What the SRC will do is that they will look at the salary of an internal auditor at Parliament or in some parastal and say: “this is the cut off point and those auditors at the Auditor -General’s office must be capped at that.” That is the premium audit office of the land. I would not want to see a situation where an auditor in that office who is assigned to audit a multi-billion enterprise in Government goes there on foot carrying a laptop and a bag on the back. That is why you keep hearing that when they go to audit, the offenders have briefcases in their offices; that this one is enough for an audit of this level, another one for an audit of another level, et cetera, and they come back and say: “we found no wrong doing, even the books of account are properly kept.” Even as you see, the people being audited are living in hopeless and reckless obscenity of wealth with no explanation as to how they made that money. I want to see auditors who audit the State and its organs, properly paid and protected. In fact, I would want to see the security of office, not only extended to the Auditor-General, but his staff as well, only to be removed where, like it has been provided for in the Bill, they have committed fraud, breached confidentiality and so on and so forth. We do not want to see a situation where an auditor in the middle of a major audit is maliciously transferred somewhere else to frustrate the audit so that the culprits can get away with this. I would want to see a situation where the salaries of the staff of the Auditor- General are not subjected to high profile, but senseless politics played by the SRC, but by bringing the scales to Parliament for approval so that they can have some super scales that can attract good quality staff. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}