{"id":768580,"url":"http://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/768580/?format=json","text_counter":65,"type":"other","speaker_name":"","speaker_title":"","speaker":null,"content":"Government and county governments. As a result of that, we will end up losing a lot of money. The county governments should deal with the pending bills because the Government regulation is very clear; that you should not spend money that you do not have. However, this is a cash cow for some of the counties which say that they have a certain number of pending bill, but when you investigate the issue they are non-existent. The issue of pending bills should be taken very seriously by the country and the Senate. We should ensure that there are no pending bills. The county governments should ensure management of pending bills by aligning procurement plans to the cash-flow projections, as well as ensuring that all pending bills are budgeted for and paid promptly in the following financial year. You will find that some counties will not carry out any development because all the money allocated to them will go into pending bills. Mr. Speaker, Sir, some of the counties have not established internal audit committees to oversee financial operations. This is contrary to Section 155 of the PFM Act, 2012. I do not know how such counties are operating if they do not have county audit committees in place. We should ensure that the counties that have not established the internal audit committees put them in place. There was also failure by the fund administrators to submit expenditure reports for the bursary funds, educational development and infrastructure fund, car loans and mortgage fund, especially by the county assemblies for the MCA and BiasharaMashinani funds, contrary to Section 168 of the PFM Act, 2012. Having served in the last House, most of the audit queries came from the bursary fund which some counties mismanaged. This is an area the Senate should look into. You will find that the needy children in some counties do not benefit from the bursary fund. I have heard of cases where the officers serving in those offices allocate themselves that money and even go for further studies. This should not be allowed. There was also the failure by counties to reconcile the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) payroll data to the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Database (IPPD) data, resulting in discrepancies between the two records. The IFMIS report recorded a total expenditure on personal emoluments for the county expenditure as Kshs1.4billion, while the data for IPPD reads Kshs1.37billion as the total payroll cost for the same period. You will find that there are a lot of discrepancies. Those who are in the IFMIS are not in IPPD, while those who are in the IPPD are not in the IFMIS. This issue has to be corrected because there are so many irregularities that are noted in many counties. There were also operational delays and IFIMS connectivity challenges which slowed down approval of procurement requests and payments to suppliers. We are getting a lot of complaints about how IFMIS is being operated in counties. Mr. Speaker, Sir, we need to put our foot down and carry out an audit into how most of the counties operate their Integrated Financial Management System(IFMIS) which is actually one of the areas that are mismanaged and misused. The other issue is that counties should implement the following recommendations in order to improve budget execution: The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes"}