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{
    "id": 551023,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/551023/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 209,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, the question of funding; how much money will go to what, has been a problem that the Auditor-General has had with the Treasury. What is proposed in this Bill is that the Auditor-General will prepare a budget which will go to the Cabinet Secretary, who will think about it and determine whether those funds are adequate. This is how you impede the work of an independent officer. We have asked the Budget Office to check if there is a method that we can ring-fence the funds that can be allocated to the Auditor-General. We ought to do so. If Parliament has ring-fenced the funds that are coming to us, we should insist that the same ring-fence be put on the funds that are available to the Auditor-General. Parliament itself, being a person interested in budgets, makes its own budgets and we are a judge in our own course but we are not allowing the person who is supposed to check whether we are spending properly to have the same latitude as a Parliament. That portion of the Bill is something that concerns me. Madam Temporary Speaker, the issue of outsourcing of audits, if we are going to give the Office of the Auditor-General enough funds, why should they look for KPMG or PriceWaterHouseCoopers which are organizations in Kenya and have employed Kenyans? If we are going to recruit members of staff--- This Bill has very innovative ideas on the recruitment of staff; they have said that the salaries of these persons will be paid equivalent to what is in the market. Therefore, we are going to attract people in nice looking suits who work for KPMG or Deloitte and Touché so that they can work for the Government. Then it would be unnecessary to outsource the services of auditing. What would be outsourced, in my view, is technology. If we can find technology in another republic, there is no problem with looking for those experts so that they can assist us in unraveling some of the problems we are facing. Regarding reports to the county assemblies, this has been said over and over again. The Public Finance Management Act has provisions for quarterly reports. The reason why we do not have audit reports now is because the auditor says he does not have capacity. Even then, I still want to know what he has been doing because even the audits of the national Government are not with us. On reporting, I would like to suggest, like Sen. Wetangula said, that we put a timeline. One of the things plaguing this Republic are that we make so many laws but we never put deadlines or default clauses. For example, it says the Cabinet Secretary would make regulations. This morning in one of the public hearings, we were told by the Commission of Administrative Justice that there is a law that was passed in 2004 which requires that the Cabinet Secretary would make regulations. It is now 2015 and those regulations have not been passed. One of the methods of getting to the bottom of financial misappropriation and flights of fancy by the county governments is ensuring that the reporting system in this proposed Bill has a timeline and a penalty for not complying. There is no penalty proposed here. Madam Temporary Speaker, lastly, the Constitution requires that if you misapply funds, you are responsible personally. This Bill has attempted to put a soft landing on those people and it is completely unacceptable and unconstitutional. This Bill should propose that if a person is found to have misapplied funds, irrespective of who he is, he or she must be surcharged or charged and not reported to Parliament. When you report 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."
}