Prof. Sam Ongeri

All parliamentary appearances

Entries 371 to 380 of 1925.

• 23 Feb 2021 in Senate: procedures. The penalties that are extra expenses to the county governments which need not be. There are penalties applied which cannot be lifted. County governments must pay due diligence to these statutory deductions so that they are remitted in time without attracting the penalties that usually come and eventually end up with a loss. Sometimes some have gone for court adjudication, which has become very expensive because the county governments have had to hire lawyers to meet these obligations. That is an additional cost that needs not have been incurred. It was not budgeted for, but was appearing distorting the ... view
• 23 Feb 2021 in Senate: We have and continue saying in this report that the first charge on any releases from the Exchequer must be on the pending bills. We are asking the National Treasury and the Controller of Budget (CoB) to apply those sanctions that whatever money is released from the Exchequer in the way of sharable revenue, the first charge must be on pending bills, so that we clear that monster. view
• 23 Feb 2021 in Senate: Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to reply to this debate. Basically, on the issue of counties that have been presented before this Committee, they have all been mentioned in the Order Paper, Volumes (i), (ii) and (iii). They are in total about 15 counties. I may add at this stage that we have been able prosecute 45 counties. The remaining counties that we were not able to prosecute were because there was one or two projects that we needed to go and check. One of them is Kajiado County and another county. Madam Temporary Speaker, ... view
• 23 Feb 2021 in Senate: We have had audits and special audits on pending bills that have been very difficult exercises. The only way to get rid of it is now to apply the final sanction that no county should be allowed to spend without clearing the pending bills. view
• 23 Feb 2021 in Senate: An element that relates to non-availability of resources is the uncollected land rates and rent on properties. When you take this element and the assets and liabilities of the county governments, it forms a very huge portfolio. Looking at the rentable houses available, if they were to do the land valuation, the roll valuation and be able to put it in place, it can generate a lot of revenue to the counties. There is also the own-source revenue which Sen. Kibiru talked about at length. We should be able to get so much money to county governments. view
• 23 Feb 2021 in Senate: Even when we are to meet and have given them a two or three-week window of opportunity to present the reports so that we can clear the audit queries, they have not been doing so. That is an area of weakness that we need to tighten as a House, so that when governors appear before the Committee, they have actually presented their full documents and information required during the period of audit. The other thing that was quite evident and which many Members have attributed to is poor bookkeeping. The audit is based on the financial statements. An audit report ... view
• 23 Feb 2021 in Senate: Accompanying this poor record-keeping is the fraudulent practices where they were trying to cover their tracks in doing certain illegal actions. We have recommended punitive measures. The EACC should go further into some of those elements to uncover the extent of that fraud so that it can be brought to book and dealt with firmly. You cannot receive money and not be able to account for it. You cannot receive money without proper record keeping and an element of accountability and governance. view
• 23 Feb 2021 in Senate: Madam Temporary Speaker, some counties like Nairobi City County have the capacity to collect a lot of money, in fact, equivalent to the shareable revenue and that should make a big difference in any given county. view
• 23 Feb 2021 in Senate: We are not asking for too much or intimidating anybody, but simply they should perform their responsibilities. We also perform ours of over sighting. view
• 23 Feb 2021 in Senate: As for the far-flung remote counties, one of the things that we need to look at is how they are evaluating their properties like land. Have they been properly registered? Many pieces of land have been lost to fraudulent speculators or middlemen who tell you they have a title deed for a certain piece of land. Eventually, they sell somebody‟s plot or allocation without the knowledge of the actual recipient. Those are the fraudulent types we were talking about. view