Unscrupulous county officials could be using fictitious pending bills, outstanding imprests and missing asset registers to siphon public funds.
A Senate panel said the concerned personnel are reluctant to produce documents for audit when called upon by authorities probing financial impropriety in counties.
Huge wage bills, often characterised by existence of ‘ghost’ workers and a lack of audit committees are also at the centre of the financial mess in the devolved units.
The Senate County Public Accounts Committee cited these in its report tabled in the floor last December.
The report on the scrutiny of the financial audit reports for county executives for the year ended June 30, 2020, was tabled by committee chairman Moses Kajwang.
Senators established that the devolved units are yet to craft a formula for dealing with the pending bills that are outstanding for several years.
They have instead continued to incur bills without prioritising payment of verified pending bills as a first charge as required by law.
The committee now wants ineligible pending bills investigated by the police.
“Pending bills declared as ineligible should be forwarded to the Directorate of Criminal Investigation to investigate proper legal action taken against those filing false claims,” the report says.
The panel recommended that the counties clear all valid pending bills which have been reviewed by the Auditor General and a payment plan be submitted to assemblies for approval.
The committee established that the counties have accumulated huge amounts of outstanding interests, contrary to the law. Regulations 93(5) of the Public Finance Management (County Government) Regulations, 2015, requires a holder of a temporary imprest to account for it within seven days after returning to duty station.
“The committee further recommends sanction and surcharging of accounting officers who fail to recover outstanding imprests in line with Regulation 93( 7 ) of the PFM (County Government) Regulations, 201 5,” the report says.
The committee said counties cannot account for their assets for lack of fixed registers, triggering concerns that the items could be in the hands of individuals.
“The county entities should update and present their Fixed Assets Register in the format prescribed by the Public Sector Accounting Standards Board,” the report says.
The panel asked counties to adopt and implement the report of the Inter-Governmental Technical Relations Committee on assets and liabilities from defunct local authorities.
The IGRTC report identified and cost the assets and liabilities of the defunct local authorities.
According to the committee, many counties are losing revenues running into millions of shillings due to failure to update their valuation roll.
“The committee noted that a number of county executives had not updated their valuation roll as required under Section 3 of the Valuation for Rating Act CAP 266 thus leading to under-collection of rent and rates,” the report reads.
The committee recommends that the county executives should expedite updating of the valuation roll in accordance with Section 3 of the Valuation for Rating Act CAP 266.
It said many county officials are
either delaying or not producing
financial documents to auditors.
